As back-to-school week wheezes into gear for the nation's 54 million or so children between the ages of five and 17, a startling, post-COVID reality is becoming more apparent, even if the implications are still too big to process. It is this: Though the U.S. population continues to grow, the number of kids attending public K-12 schools will likely never again reach its 2019 peak.
The rise of homeschooling—from around 2.8 percent of the school-aged population pre-pandemic to around 5.8 percent now (reliable statistics are hard to come by)—is a chief contributor to that decline, along with ever-decreasing birth rates. Between fall of 2019 and fall of 2030, the National Center for Public Education Statistics (NCES) projected this past February, public school enrollment will decrease by 7 percent, from 50.8 million to 47.3 million.
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