How to read district enrollment trends.

Enrollment change needs two comparable observations

Compare enrollment for the same entity and a defined pair of school years. Absolute change is ending enrollment minus starting enrollment. Percentage change divides that difference by starting enrollment, then multiplies by 100. A zero or unavailable starting value cannot support the usual percentage-change formula.

A worked example

A district moving from 10,000 to 9,500 students has a change of −500 students, or −5%. A district moving from 1,000 to 950 has the same percentage change but loses 50 students. These hypothetical examples show why both the count and the percentage belong in a comparison.

Check the district and school population

Renamed schools, new campuses, closures, district reorganizations, and changing grade spans can change a total without reflecting the same continuing population. Join using documented identifiers, review unmatched records, and keep the inclusion rule constant. Do not mix a sum of selected schools with an official district total without checking their coverage.

What this release summarizes

The enrollment trends summary presents derived school-level classifications for the 2020-to-2024 comparison in release v2026.07. Counts of shrinking, stable, or growing schools are not district enrollment growth rates. Consult NCES Common Core of Data files for year-specific files and the CCD definition for the directory universe.

What a trend does not explain

Enrollment change alone cannot establish a cause. Attendance boundaries, grade configurations, population changes, and program choices require additional evidence. Avoid describing a declining total as a measure of instructional quality or forecasting future enrollment from two observations.