Review of The Enrollment Decline Windfall

An NEPC Review funded by the Great Lakes Center

Key Takeaway: EdChoice report's oversimplified methods and faulty assumptions undermine its claims that public school districts benefit when enrollment declines.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI (MAY 8, 2025) - Most U.S. states continue to heavily rely on per-pupil funding models. Accordingly, projections of declining school-aged populations through 2030-combined with the rapid expansion of private school voucher policies-have raised serious concerns about the future adequacy of public school funding. A recent EdChoice report downplays these concerns.

However, in their review of The Enrollment Decline Windfall , David E. DeMatthews and Jinseok Shin of the University of Texas at Austin explain that the report's analysis is fundamentally flawed due to its overly simplistic treatment of a complex issue.

The EdChoice report argues that districts with declining enrollment may end up with more resources per remaining student, partly because federal, state, and local funding levels do not always drop proportionately as student enrollment drops. But DeMatthews and Shin identify five major shortcomings that undermine the report's conclusions about enrollment decline:

(a) it fails to consider structural cost differences that influence district finances;

(b) it oversimplifies the categorization of school district types;

(c) it lacks an adequate approach to analyzing longitudinal data;

(d) it includes faulty assumptions about how per-student expenditures benefit students; and

(e) it fails to consider how more severe declines in student enrollment can trigger reduced services, school closures, and other reductions that would negatively impact students, especially those with the greatest needs.

For these reasons, DeMatthews and Shin conclude that EdChoice's report offers little of value to policymakers or state leaders. Its unsophisticated analysis fails to engage with the real complexities of public school funding and enrollment trends.

Find the review, by David E. DeMatthews and Jinseok Shin, at:

https://www.greatlakescenter.org

Find The Enrollment Decline Windfall, published by EdChoice, at: https://www.edchoice.org/research/the-enrollment-decline-windfall/

NEPC Reviews ( https://nepc.colorado.edu/reviews ) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: https://www.greatlakescenter.org

The mission of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice is to support and disseminate high-quality research and reviews of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for use by those who advocate for education reform.

Visit the Great Lakes Center website at GreatLakesCenter.org

Contacts

Michelle Renee Valladares

David E. DeMatthews: