Local
D.C. Public Schools enrollment shows 17 percent drop-off
By: Michael Neibauer
Examiner Staff Writer
September 8, 2008
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| (ASSOCIATED PRESS) |
In the days before the school year started, Mayor Adrian Fenty predicted DCPS would serve “close to 50,000 students” in 2008-2009.
Dena Iverson, schools spokeswoman, said as of Tuesday only 42,964 students were registered to attend classes — 7,200 fewer than last year’s final count. That meant there were 17 percent fewer students in school last week than the last day of the 2007-2008 school year.
“We expect the number to increase as all of the students complete their registration,” Iverson said. The projected enrollment for the year remained at 46,260.
Total DCPS enrollment has collapsed in recent years, from 67,000 in 1998 to 55,000 in 2006 and 50,170 last year, as parents pulled their children from a failing public education system. The nearly 20,000-student drop-off corresponds neatly with soaring public charter school enrollment, which has climbed from 3,594 in 1998 to 10,651 in 2001 and more than 22,000 in 2007.
Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee closed 23 schools in June, in part because the troubled DCPS had steadily shed its student population, leaving many school buildings half empty. The consolidations, Rhee said recently, allowed the system to redirect resources and implement new staffing and learning models specifically tailored for individual schools.
“When we made the announcement over the school closures, we wanted to do that so there was a much more efficient use of money and that the money we are actually spending in the school district is actually felt by the students and by the schools,” Rhee said during a pre-school year news conference.
Mary Levy, schools expert with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, said it is too soon to expect the academic and staffing reforms implemented by Rhee to have an impact on either test scores or the terrible DCPS reputation. Parents “want to know what they’re going to get,” Levy said, and Fenty’s school takeover remains an unproven strategy after only a year.
“This was absolutely predictable,” Levy said of the school enrollment downturn. “Parents want some certainty, and closing schools is pretty much guaranteed to lead to loss of enrollment because we have so many other options.”
