“American public schools are in the middle of a crisis,” the New York Times‘s Natalie Kitroeff says in the November 11 episode of Times podcast The Daily. “There aren’t enough students to fill their classrooms. In some cities, enrollments have been shrinking so dramatically that officials say they have no choice but to close schools en masse.”

Interviewing Times education reporter Sarah Mervosh, who co-authored an article on the topic (also describing the situation as a “crisis”) in May, Kitroeff asks Mervosh to to “help us understand the scope of …. the enrollment problem in public schools today and why this problem matters or should matter to us.”

Mervosh offers several answers:

First, funding is tied to student numbers, and reductions don’t scale well to desired class sizes and teacher numbers, or to maintaining “magnet” and “specialty” schools as student numbers decline.

Second, schools tend toward segregation by race and class (despite decades of supposed remedies for such segregation), and parents get upset when there are fewer options that cater to their preferred  segregation schemes.

Third (but obviously tied to the aforementioned segregation), the obvious response to fewer students is fewer schools, and “closing schools is one of the most unpopular things you can do in education.”

When someone asserts a “crisis,” the natural interpretation goes with the negative definition per WordNet: “an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty.”

That negative definition is fairly modern. The previously prevailing definition was more along the lines of “a crucial stage or turning point in the course of something.”

Yes, declining student enrollment in government schools is a “crisis” in the second sense … but it need not be one in the first.

Why is that enrollment decreasing?

The biggest factor at this point is that Americans are simply having fewer kids than we used to, a trend that seems likely to continue.

A second factor, not as large but growing, is that more and more parents are choosing private education and homeschooling over the government version.

The number of POTENTIAL government students has been decreasing since 2007, when birth rates began falling. That was the beginning of the turning point, the “crisis.” Private education and homeschooling are increasingly reducing the number of ACTUAL government students as well.

Will some people experience negative effects from this “crisis?” Yes.

Parents may have to make some difficult choices about where, how, and from whom their kids will receive education.

Fewer potential teachers and administrators will have jobs waiting for them if they choose to major in education in college.

These are the kinds of problems that markets are very good at dealing with. Government monopolies, not so much. We should push our politicians to move toward separation of school and state and letting the market do its thing, instead of just closing/consolidating specific facilities, reducing hiring quotas, and trying to keep the government education gravy train rolling.

But even within the context of “public” schools, Kitroeff and Mervosh seem to miss the gigantic silver linings in this ongoing student enrollment decline.

Fewer students and fewer facilities mean lower costs.

Dilapidated schools can be closed, sold, and put to productive use by the private sector.

Instead of hiring and retaining MORE teachers, government school systems can get selective and insist on BETTER teachers.

Taxpayers can keep more of their money, using that money to improve both the educations and the general living conditions of their children.

Just kidding on that last one. If politicians spend less of your money on schools, they’ll just spend more of your money on other, probably equally dysfunctional, activities.

But it’s a start.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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