Statewide Enrollment Continues to Climb

For the fourth year in a row, the overall number of students enrolled in Iowa’s public schools for the 2014-15 school year increased from the year before, according to the official certified enrollment report released last week by the Iowa Department of Education. 

This pattern follows 17 years of declining enrollment. However, the rate of growth is slowing and is expected to plateau in the years to come. 

A total of 480,772 students in kindergarten through 12th grade enrolled in public schools during the 2014-15 school year, compared to 478,921 students in 2013-14 (an increase of about .4 percent). 

The statewide enrollment increase is due in part to an upsurge in birth rates from 2003 to 2008. Birth rates spiked in 2007 but have decreased in recent years. 

Despite the statewide enrollment increase in 2014-15, a majority of the state’s 338 school districts (52 percent) had declining enrollment. The smallest districts faced the largest losses: Well over 60 percent of districts with fewer than 600 students saw enrollment decline in 2014-15 from the year before. Of those smallest districts, well over 70 percent experienced declining enrollment in the past five years, from 2010-11 to 2014-15. 

However, a majority of larger districts with student populations of 1,000 or more posted enrollment gains in 2014-15 – with the larger the district classification, the larger the gain. 

Of the largest district classification (7,500 students or more), nearly 73 percent experienced enrollment increases. The increase is even more noteworthy when incorporating enrollment counts from the last five years: Nearly 82 percent of the largest districts experienced enrollment increases. 

The 2014-15 certified enrollment summary by school district is available on the Department of Education’s website.