Oregon’s public school enrollment continues decline as administrators scramble to collect data, track students

More than 37,000 students have left Oregon’s public schools since the COVID-19 pandemic – reversing a years-long trend and raising questions about enrollment tracking, according to recent reports.

“While declining birth rates in the state were already affecting school enrollment trends, the sharp drop in students raises questions about where once-enrolled students have gone, especially without statewide enrollment tracking for students in other settings, like homeschool or private school,” OPB wrote in a Nov. 13 article.

“Most of the states with the largest numbers of such children are in the West, but Oregon had the highest percentage.” 

‘Pretty murky’ data collection 

Some of the challenges for officials trying to explain the enrollment shortfall involve inconsistent – or in the case of homeschooling, nonexistent – tracking data. 

“In Oregon, families who choose to homeschool their children report that to their local education service district,” OPB explains. “But Oregon does not collect data on students in private schools or homeschooling from the state’s 19 ESDs.” 

As a result, the Beaver State relies mostly on estimates for the overall populations of students outside the public system. 

“The picture on what’s going on at homeschool is pretty murky, and the same thing goes for private,” said Ethan Sharygin, director of Portland State University’s Population Research Center. 

Other unknowns include the number of families leaving the state after 2020, which also affect the number of enrolled students. 

“Are they [kids] really missing from schools, or did they out-migrate? Did the family leave?” Sharygin said. 

“The outmigration is really hard to observe, especially since 2020, it was so turbulent — a lot of the data we rely on to tell us when folks have left were interrupted.” 

Before the pandemic, declining birth rates had alerted officials to anticipate a drop in school enrollment even though numbers had been increasing from 2012 to 2019. 

However, the 2020-2021 academic brought a substantial decrease with 21,744 fewer students, the Oregon Department of Education concluded. 

“(The pandemic) compounded the decline,” Sharygin said. “There would still be a decline, but the enrollment would be quite a bit higher.” 

‘I just never really wanted to be there’ 

Journalists at OPB noted the example of Dale, who was enrolled in Oregon’s public schools as a seventh grader during COVID-19. 

“I just never really wanted to be there,” he said of his school experience. “I’d rather learn life skills, trades, and do other important stuff that would get me somewhere in life.” 

He withdrew from public education altogether and now performs multiple jobs “from working on septic tanks to painting and maintenance work around Lincoln City,” OPB explained. 

“It wasn’t just Dale,” said Carolyn Smith, Dale’s grandmother, of his decision to leave school. “There were a lot of kids that were affected by it. And I know there were a lot of kids that didn’t go back.”