EDITORIAL: On schools, families voting with their feet

Dwindling enrollment has the Clark County School District considering job cuts. District officials announced last month that 103 employees — 97 support professionals and six licensed professionals, which includes teachers — are without positions.

The problem stems from the fact that families are fleeing district schools at a high rate. Enrollment for the 2025-26 school year stands at 277,803 students, about 3 percent below projections. That continues an almost decades-long trend. Since 2017, the number of kids attending district schools has cratered by 15 percent. Meanwhile, Clark County’s population has grown by an estimated 9.7 percent over the same period.

The pandemic and the remote learning disaster propagated by teacher unions certainly exacerbated the exodus. But the trend continues, and what’s happening in Clark County isn’t unique. Public school enrollments are down across the country, a recent Brookings report noted, particularly among younger children. While the nation’s declining birthrate is a factor, the decline is also from slightly higher enrollments at private campuses and an explosion in home-schooling.

A Johns Hopkins School of Education report released this month found that many parents have taken matters into their own hands.

“In the 2024-2025 school year, homeschooling continued to grow across the United States,” researcher Angela R. Watson wrote, “increasing at an average rate of 5.4 percent. This is nearly three times the pre-pandemic homeschooling growth rate of around 2 percent. Notably, 36 percent of reporting states recorded their highest home-school enrollment numbers ever — exceeding even the peaks reached during the pandemic.”

Ms. Watson concludes that this represents “a fundamental shift in how American families are thinking about education.”

Nevada is not among the 30 states that report homeschooling data. But census numbers and other surveys estimate that the percentage of Nevada families teaching their children at home jumped from 2.5 percent pre-pandemic to 13.5 percent in 2021. The number had dropped to about 6 percent for the 2023-24 calendar, still more than double the number before COVID.

The district’s dismal academic record no doubt plays a role. The latest student test results showed modest gains — primarily in charter schools — but scores have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. Nevada students remain among the lowest performers on the ACT college readiness exam.

If any private enterprise were faced with this type of performance and customer dissatisfaction, layoffs would be imminent and reforms imperative, if it survived at all. Yet the hidebound education establishment typically mobilizes to oppose even the most modest efforts at improvement. In Nevada, legislative Democrats for decades have opposed accountability measures — watering down Read by 3 and plans to impose more rigorous teacher evaluations, for instance. They’ve supported the elimination of high school exit exams and stood silent as the Clark County district implemented dumbed-down grading practices. They oppose giving parents more schooling options, even attempting at one point to cap the number of charter campuses.

Parents have responded by voting with their feet. If district officials in Clark County hope to reverse declining enrollment, they’ll work tirelessly to improve their product by embracing reforms that give families confidence that their children are receiving an education worth more than the piece of paper they’ll be handed upon graduation.