COVID-19 and Catholic School Enrollment in Northeast Ohio

 Last week the Ohio Department of Education provided an update that included some unusual public school enrollment statistics, including a 3% decline overall, 8% decline in Kindergarten and 27% decline in Preschool. This week the NCEA released a data brief on national declines in Catholic schools, showing national declines and some emerging patterns. An initial look at Diocese of Cleveland Catholic schools provides some interesting insights, including:


  • Strong Primary Grades: In our Catholic schools, primary grades saw the strongest performance. Grades 1 and 2 both enrolled more students across our system this year than last year, and our system saw only a 1.9% decline in Kindergarten compared to the 8% statewide in public schools.

  • Preschool: Like the state of Ohio’s public numbers, preschool was most affected, with Catholic schools in the Diocese of Cleveland experiencing a 24% decline.

  • High School Narrow Decrease: High schools were relatively flat, down 1.18% largely due to an incoming freshman class about 3% smaller than last year’s.

  • School Choice Scholarships Mattered: A clear difference emerged between schools serving students receiving state scholarships and those serving families who cannot access the state’s voucher programs. Specifically, the schools that were not providers for any state scholarship programs saw a 4.03% enrollment decline, compared with only a 1.21% decline in the 63 schools serving families who are eligible for one or more of the state’s voucher programs.

  • Demand for Catholic School Choice: the Diocese of Cleveland saw a 9.2% increase this year in the number of students using one of the school choice programs to attend a Catholic school.


You can view a detailed analysis of enrollment for the Diocese of Cleveland here. Our friends at Partnership Schools, who operate two Diocesan elementary schools in Cleveland, shared an outstanding national perspective on equity, accessibility, and demand for urban Catholic education in their Enrollment Report this week.

Popular posts from this blog

One Billion Dollars

Image
Haven’t you heard? Ohio is spending  a billion dollars  on private school choice! Numbers had been moving as the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce finalized the reconciliation of the fiscal year. They appear to have settled, showing that Ohio provided $962 million in payments to just over  150,000 state scholarship students  in all 5 programs for school year 2024, an average of just over $6,500 per FTE. Film buffs of a certain age may remember the   Austin Powers   movies from the 1990s, where super spy Powers and his nemesis Dr. Evil, both played by comedian Mike Myers, square off in the modern day after being frozen since the 1960s. In one scene Dr. Evil threatens to hold the world hostage for… “one MILLION dollars!” And that’s the gag – his evil henchmen have to point out that it “isn't exactly a lot of money these days.” Over a century ago, Mark Twain popularized the phrase about three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Today i...
Read more

150,000+ Reasons to Celebrate: National School Choice Week

Image
  It is National School Choice Week, and we in Ohio have reason to celebrate – in fact, more than 150,000 reasons and counting, since that’s how many total students have applied for state scholarships since Ohio’s expansion of school choice to every household this year. All five scholarship programs are growing, to the benefit of Ohio taxpayers, families, and school systems. While it is cause for celebration, not everyone in Ohio is happy: a group known as “ Vouchers Hurt Ohio ” attacks this mechanism that permits state dollars to follow pupils. A spokesperson has been cherry picking facts to craft two partisan narratives that are troublingly misleading that I’ll address in this space and show why they are actually  cause for celebration . Program Growth The first misperception is that there are too many applicants, or the insinuation that the programs' wild popularity as people exercise choice will somehow result in being over budget. That claim was made by an advocate for th...
Read more

The Enemy

Image
School choice is not the enemy of public schools; rather, it is a component of “public education,” the ideal in the State Board of Education’s  vision   that all Ohioans “graduate from the PK-12 education system with the knowledge, skills and behaviors necessary” for continued education or the workforce. This position,   long held by the Catholic Church , is also the basis for Ohio’s scholarship programs that provide vouchers to students disadvantaged by low income, assignment to underperforming public schools, or diagnosed special needs. Every student who attends on a voucher -- all children of taxpaying Ohioans -- represents a savings to the state due to the efficiency of nonpublic schools. Some opponents have been grasping for reasons to protest, like a recent example in the  Cincinnati Enquirer , reprinted around the state, that employed some crude comparisons to conclude that state voucher programs were not performing better than public schools on state tests an...
Read more