SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced today the release of 2019–2020 enrollment data for California’s kindergarten through grade twelve public schools. The data breaks down enrollment by ethnicity and grade, along with English Language Acquisition Status, and can be sorted by county, district, or school.
“In these unprecedented times, these data can provide a clear look at all California students,” Thurmond said. “It’s especially helpful in showing where students are struggling and additional resources are needed as we work to close the digital divide and provide assistance for schools having to utilize distance-learning models.”
One important category is school-level data for Free or Reduced-Price Meals, which is an effective indicator of student poverty. All data is utilized for state and federal reporting purposes, including determinations for supplemental grant funding through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Important findings include:
● Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity (Multi-Year): Overall enrollment is down from 6,235,520 in 2014–15 to 6,163,001 in 2019–2020, a decrease of 1.2 percent. Also during that time, the percentage of white students decreased from 24.6 percent to 22.4 percent and the percentage of African American students decreased from 6.0 percent to 5.3 percent. However, between 2014–15 and 2019–2020, the percentage of Hispanic/Latino students increased from 53.6 percent to 54.9 percent.
● English Language Acquisition Status (Multi-Year): Between 2014–15 and 2019–2020, the percentage of Hispanic/Latino students classified as English Learners decreased from 83.2 percent to 81.2 percent. Overall, between 2014–15 and 2019–2020, the percentage of students who are English learners decreased from 22.3 percent to 18.6 percent, while the percentage of students who are Reclassified Fluent English Proficient increased from 15.6 percent to 18.4 percent during that same time period. These data show a continuing trend of a decreasing proportion of students being identified as English learners and an increasing proportion of students being reclassified fluent English proficient.
● Enrollment for Charter and Non-Charter Schools (Multi-Year): While overall enrollment in non-charter schools decreased between 2014–15 and 2019–2020, enrollment in charter schools has increased from 8.7 percent to 11.0 percent of the public school population statewide.
● Charter and Non-Charter Student Group Enrollment (2019–2020): Charter schools tend to have a smaller percentage of their enrollment who belong to disadvantaged student groups, such as English learners, foster youth, homeless youth, migrant students, students with disabilities, and socio-economically disadvantaged. The difference is most pronounced for the English learner student group. In 2019–2020, 16.7 percent of charter school students are identified as English learners, while 22.9 percent of non-charter school students are similarly identified.
The data is compiled by the California Department of Education from data submitted by local educational agencies to the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS). The updated enrollment data is available on the CDE’s Data Quest website.
Additional resources:
Downloadable files to support the Data Quest reports.
Downloadable files containing school-level data for Free or Reduced-Price Meals.
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