For the past few years, I’ve put up a chart of TUSD’s enrollment numbers beginning in 2000. The district has a detailed table of daily enrollment for those years separated out by grade, ethnicity and gender. However, it wasn’t updated last year because, I was told, of a change in computer operations. I recently received the 2016-17 numbers from the district and was told the daily enrollment count will return to the district website toward the end of this year.
Here is the updated chart.
A few things before I look at the numbers. I’ve consistently used the enrollment numbers on the 175th day because they seem to have less random variation than other days during the year. However, the numbers I’m using this year are somewhat different than last year’s. The reason is, I hadn’t noticed until I looked over the numbers for this post that I had included preschool enrollment in the count, which skews the count, especially for the past school year. Preschool numbers have increased slowly over the years, but they made a big jump this past year, increasing by 300 children. If I included them in the chart, the enrollment loss for this past school year would be smaller. This corrected chart only includes K-12 numbers.
The chart shows an average decline in district enrollment of about 350 students a year from 2000 to 2007. The numbers take a plunge from 2008 to 2012, averaging about 1600 a year, then the yearly decreases slow. Over the last three years, the average loss has been about 650 students, which is an improvement from the previous seven years but still a serious problem for the district.
My chart only shows the total numbers year to year. A look at the grade-by-grade changes in the detailed district tables reveals a few problems and one bright spot.
The most serious problem I see is that last year’s enrollment numbers for kindergarten and first grade are 200 to 300 students lower than the numbers for grades two through five. As those K-1 students move through the grades, they will continue to lower the enrollment numbers for the twelve to thirteen years they’ll be students unless the district can increase their numbers. And if the kindergarten and first grade enrollment continues at its current low numbers, it will create a cascading enrollment downturn for the district.
The district has about 400 fewer students each year in middle school than it had in the fifth grade, meaning that parents are pulling their children out of the district for the middle school years. In the ninth grade, the numbers go back up by about 250 students, so many of those parents must be bringing their children back for high school. This indicates that the district needs to work on making its middle schools more attractive to parents to keep the numbers up. If 200 more students had stayed for middle school in each grade in 2016-17, the district’s loss from the previous year would nearly disappear.
The bright spot is that high schools are doing a better job of holding onto students than they have in the past. In the years from 2000 to 2003, the district lost about 450 students each year from grades nine through twelve. In the past three years, the loss is closer to 225 students each year.
I haven’t delved into the causes of the district’s slipping numbers because there are so many possibilities, many of which could be in play. Maybe TUSD is losing students because it’s doing a poor job of educating students. Maybe the increased “school choice” in the state—more charter schools, the ability to enroll in other districts and the increase in private school vouchers—has drained off an increasing number of students. There may have been a demographic shift in the city which has lowered the school-aged population in certain age groups. I’m sure there are other possibilities as well. But the bottom line is, TUSD has to do what it can to improve its numbers or face a variety of bad choices in the future.
This article appears in Aug 10-16, 2017.
The answer is “all of the above”. Tucson has fewer people and fewer jobs than it had ten years ago. Thus, the competition is over a static pie. Might even be a shrinking pie. About ten years ago, the National Research Center did a survey of Tucson and only 7% of parents rated their neighborhood an excellent place to raise a child. Not likely that they are attracting parents to the community.
The next step ought to be to graph a ratio of the Mesa school district, the largest in the state to TUSD who used to be the second largest in the state. It now appears that TUSD might be falling to the 4th largest district.
When this apocalypse started, TUSD was spending almost twice as much per year per student as Mesa. They probably are still spending at least 20 percent more per student.
The Mesa School district is parent and student focused. They measure the degree of excellence perceived by their parents and integrate that measure into their performance pay system. That degree of Mesa excellence has increased from 44% in 1996 to over 65% most recently.
Mesa has enormously more charter schools around them than TUSD, yet they have held their attendance much more successfully.
TUSD is still below 40% excellence. That means that 60% of TUSD parents are actively looking at alternatives. Its almost a guarantee that TUSD will shrink another 700 students next year.
Think of what would happen to TUSD if charter schools could easily open in Tucson.
So much for the theory that money can improve outcomes.
I find Huppenthal’s comments and statistics suspicious at best, and often knowingly either hyper overstated or hyper-understated to suit his purposes. Having listened to him at length in sworn testimony, I know he cannot be relied upon to tell the truth or to answer questions directly. He always has an axe to grind. During his lamentable term in office, he deliberately ignored specific evidence concerning statists on test scores, etc. presented to his office. Therefore, I await with interest responses from a competent observer on the interesting data Safier presents.
Well GCB1, I can tell you from a parent’s perspective that we pulled our son out of TUSD & purposefully relocated to live in the Vail School district. We did not want our son to go to Secrest Middle School or any other TUSD School for that matter. TUSD has completely failed our child. He has special learning disabilities and thy did nothing to educate him.
We were not alone either. We met at least twenty other parents who likewise moved out of TUSD and relocated to Vail specifically for their excellence in education. And that was just at one school. Now multiply that by how many schools in the Vail District. Then you will begin to understand why TUSD’s numbers are shrinking while other school districts in the area are increasing. No great mystery to me
Oh and for the record when our son entered 6th grade @ Desert Sky Middle school, he was behind by 3.5 grade levels. Now entering 7th grade and in the second quarter he has caught up to just below the 6th grade level. He still has challenges, and will likely never really “catch-up” to his proper grade level. But I’m betting when he is ready to graduate from Highschool he will have a much better education that what he would have received in TUSD!!
So, say what you will about Mr Huppinthal and his comments. I for one am inclined to give them credence. My son and our situation is just one of hundreds of TUSD ESCAPEES.
I live in a small town in Pennsylvania, but winter in Southern Arizona. The parents in my town have no real choice for high school, except a Christian school 20 miles away. Very few could afford that anyway. However, our school enrollment has dropped steadily while the population has remained steady. We have little in common with a big district like TUSD, yet both districts have lost a large percentage of pupils. One factor that could come into play in both cases is abortion.