Report: Tennessee public school student losses traced to surge in private school enrollment

Tennessee public schools have lost more than 14,000 students since the start of the pandemic — with most switching to private schools and a lesser number newly homeschooled, a new reported from the Urban Institute has found.

The report, which relies on state-level data collected by the Institute in collaboration with the Associated Press and Stanford University, traces enrollment shifts between the 2019-2020 and the 2021-2022 school years, when an estimated 1.2 million students left public schools nationwide.

In Tennessee, there were 981,321 public school students enrolled in 2019; by the Fall of 2021, that number had decreased to 967,278, according to the report.

Tennessee had among the largest new enrollments in private schools, with 18,862 new private school enrollees — or about a 24% increase in private enrollment overall. By the Fall of 2021, there were 98,452 students enrolled in Tennessee private schools.

Homeschooling increased by more than 2,240 students to 13,600 — a 20% increase enrollment.

Another another 2,678 students shifts in education remain unexplained.

The data does not break down which age groups in each state were more likely to leave public schools, but overall “these public school enrollment losses were particularly prominent among students in early elementary grades and kindergarten.”

The full report, “Where the Kids Went: Nonpublic Schooling and Demographic Change during the Pandemic Exodus from Public Schools” can be viewed here.