Worcester - EdTribune MD - Maryland Education Data

One District Growing: Maryland's 12-District Reversal

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

This is part of The MDEdTribune's series on Maryland's 2025-26 enrollment data.

A year ago, half of Maryland's 24 school districts were adding students. This year, one is.

Twelve districts that grew in 2024-25 reversed direction in 2025-26, flipping from collective gains to collective losses. The state shed 9,385 students, a 1.1% decline that pushed total enrollment to 849,698. That is the steepest single-year drop since the pandemic year of 2020-21 and leaves Maryland just 1,532 students above where it started a decade ago.

Kent County^↗, with 1,609 students, is the only district in the state that added enrollment this year. It gained 18 students after losing 30 the year before.

The reversal, district by district

The scale of the flip is unusual. In 2024-25, the state was evenly split: 12 districts growing, 12 declining. By 2025-26, the split was 1-to-23.

Prince George's County^↗ swung the hardest: from gaining 786 students to losing 1,324, a net reversal of 2,110 seats. Baltimore City^↗ went from adding 1,101 students, its largest single-year gain in the dataset, to losing 329. Frederick County^↗, which had posted gains in eight of the last ten years, lost 123 students after gaining 338 the year before.

Several suburban and exurban districts that had been buoyed by post-pandemic rebounds also reversed. Anne Arundel^↗ went from +511 to -316. Charles County^↗ went from +274 to -296. Wicomico^↗, on the Eastern Shore, swung from +501 to -176.

Even the smallest districts were not spared. Carroll County^↗ had the sharpest reversal by rate: a system that was essentially flat (+17) a year ago lost 442 students, a 1.7% decline. Caroline^↗, Somerset^↗, Worcester^↗, and Queen Anne's^↗ all posted modest gains in 2024-25 and modest losses in 2025-26.

The worst since COVID

The statewide loss is the second-largest one-year decline in the dataset, exceeded only by the 18,291-student pandemic-year plunge in 2020-21. It erases four years of uneven recovery. After bottoming out at 853,307 in 2021-22, enrollment climbed back to 859,083 by 2024-25. The 2025-26 figure of 849,698 is now 3,609 students below that post-COVID low.

The decade-long trajectory shows how fragile the recovery was. Maryland reached 876,810 students in 2019-20, a pre-pandemic high. It has now lost 27,112 students from that peak, a 3.1% decline. The current enrollment of 849,698 sits just 1,532 above the 2015-16 level of 848,166.

Where the losses concentrated

Three districts account for more than half the statewide loss. Montgomery County^↗, already declining, nearly tripled its losses: from -997 to nearly triple that figure, a 1.8% drop that left it at 151,983 students. Baltimore County^↗ went from -583 to -1,913, also 1.8%. Prince George's, as noted, swung from growth to a 1,324-student loss.

Montgomery's trajectory is particularly consequential. The state's largest school system projects losing nearly 7,000 additional students by 2032, a forecast driven by declining births in the county. MCPS Capital Budget Manager Donald Connelly told the school board that births in Montgomery County fell from more than 13,000 in 2014 to less than 11,000 in 2023.

Eleven districts hit all-time lows in the dataset (which begins in 2015-16): Allegany, Baltimore County, Calvert, Caroline, Cecil, Dorchester, Garrett, Harford, Montgomery, St. Mary's, and Talbot.

A convergence of pressures

The mass reversal does not appear to have a single cause. Multiple forces converged on 2025-26, and the data available, which covers only total enrollment and grade-level counts, cannot isolate their individual contributions.

The most widely cited factor is a structural one: declining birth rates. Maryland recorded roughly 70,000 births in 2019-20, compared with more than 77,000 in 2007-08. Those smaller cohorts are now entering elementary school while the larger ones graduate. The arithmetic is straightforward, but it has been true for years. What changed in 2025-26 was the layering of additional pressures on top of that baseline.

Immigration enforcement is one such pressure. Montgomery County Superintendent Thomas Taylor cited drops in international student enrollment, along with "skyrocketing housing costs" pushing families with young children out of the county. In October 2025, MCPS welcomed just over 100 newcomer students, fewer than half the 400-plus during the same period a year earlier. State Board of Education President Josh Michael told The Baltimore Banner: "Never has there been an administration in the era of mass public schooling where we have treated immigrants this way."

"Never has there been an administration in the era of mass public schooling where we have treated immigrants this way." — Josh Michael, President, Maryland State Board of Education, The Baltimore Banner

That dynamic is most visible in Prince George's and Montgomery counties, which together are home to more than half of Maryland's foreign-born population. The two districts combined lost 4,132 students this year. But immigration enforcement cannot explain the reversal in Carroll County, Washington County, or the Eastern Shore districts, where immigrant populations are much smaller.

Federal employment losses add another layer. Maryland is losing federal jobs faster than any other state as the administration cuts positions, potentially forcing families to relocate. Homeschooling has also surged: Maryland now has roughly 42,000 homeschooled children, up 51% from 28,000 in 2020.

The enrollment data cannot distinguish between families who left the state, switched to private or homeschool, or simply never enrolled a kindergartner. It captures the outcome but not the mechanism.

From split to nearly unanimous

The direction chart tells the clearest version of the story. Pre-pandemic, Maryland routinely had 14 to 17 districts growing each year. Even in the recovery years of 2022 and 2023, seven and 16 districts, respectively, posted gains. The 2025-26 result, with a single district in positive territory, matches the near-unanimity of the pandemic year itself, when only two districts grew.

The difference is that COVID was an acute shock with a visible cause. The 2025-26 reversal is not a single event but a slow-moving convergence: fewer births, fewer newcomers, fewer federal paychecks, more families choosing alternatives to public school. Each force is individually modest. Together, they produced the most geographically uniform decline in a decade.

The funding question

Under the Blueprint for Maryland's Future, school funding flows through a per-pupil formula that uses the greater of prior-year enrollment or a three-year moving average. That buffer was designed for temporary dips, not a statewide reversal. If 2026-27 enrollment continues to decline, the moving average will catch up, and districts will face funding reductions proportional to their losses.

Montgomery County's accelerating losses, on top of prior-year losses, will compress that buffer quickly. For Prince George's, which had been growing, the sudden reversal means 2025-26 funding was calibrated for a district that no longer exists at that size.

The question facing Maryland's school systems is not whether to plan for smaller enrollment. The question is whether the 2025-26 reversal was a one-year convergence of unusual pressures, or the beginning of a structural shift in which growth districts no longer exist. The answer depends on factors, from federal immigration policy to interest rates to birth registrations, that no superintendent controls.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

The COVID K Class Hits Third Grade

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

This is part of The MDEdTribune's series on Maryland's 2025-26 enrollment data.

The wave nobody staffed for

Every grade in Maryland lost students this year except three. Grade 4 gained 2,103 students, Grade 12 added 547, and Grade 6 picked up 379. Grade 3 lost 2,470. Grades 3 and 4 sit side by side in elementary school hallways, and the contrast between them is not a coincidence. It is the same event, viewed from two angles.

The class that entered kindergarten in fall 2021, during the deepest trough of pandemic enrollment, is now in fifth grade. But the disruption it left behind did not end when families came back. The pandemic created an uneven sequence of kindergarten classes, some larger, some smaller, and that sequence is still moving through Maryland's grade structure like a pressure wave. Third grade absorbed the sharpest hit this year: a 3.7% decline, the largest at any grade level, as a relatively large cohort aged out and a smaller one took its place.

How cohort arithmetic works

The mechanics are straightforward, once you trace each class to its kindergarten origin.

The students in third grade last year (2024-25) were the kindergarten class of 2021-22: 61,671 children who entered school during the first big bounce-back from the pandemic trough. That was the largest K class since COVID hit, and as it moved through the grades, it inflated each one in turn. Third grade in 2024-25 reached 66,787.

This year, that bounce-back cohort moved to fourth grade, which is why fourth grade gained 2,103 students. The cohort replacing them in third grade entered kindergarten in 2022-23: just 60,986 students, about 700 fewer. The swap produced the largest single-grade decline in the state.

The pattern is predictable. Next year, when the K-2022 bounce-back class moves to fifth grade, that grade will likely see a gain. Third grade will receive the even smaller K-2023-24 class (60,514 kindergartners) and could shrink again. Each year, each grade experiences the pandemic's enrollment distortion on a slight delay.

A pipeline running dry

The COVID trough is only part of the story. Behind it, the kindergarten pipeline itself is contracting.

Maryland enrolled 65,087 kindergartners in 2019-20, an unusually large class and the highest in the dataset. By 2025-26, that number had fallen to 59,204, a decline of 9.0%. Even measured against the more typical 2018-19 class of 63,779, the current K class is 7.2% smaller. No post-COVID K class has come within 3,400 students of the pre-pandemic average. The average pre-COVID K class (2016 to 2020) was 64,463 students. The average post-COVID K class (2021 to 2026) is 60,055, a gap of roughly 4,400 students per year.

The immediate cause is demographic. Maryland's birth rate has been declining since the 2007-09 recession, and Montgomery County alone saw births fall from over 13,000 in 2014 to under 11,000 by 2023. "We are continuing to see an enrollment decline because of those live births and you can see where we are headed in the next six years," MCPS Capital Budget and Projects Manager Donald Connelly told the Montgomery County school board in October 2025.

But birth rates alone did not produce the jagged grade-by-grade pattern. The pandemic layered a one-time disruption on top of a long-term trend. The K-2021 class (58,391) was an anomaly, roughly 6,700 students smaller than the 2020 class (65,087). Many families delayed entry or chose homeschooling. When those families returned the following year, they created the K-2022 bounce-back. Now both the trough and the bounce are moving through the system simultaneously, producing adjacent grades that swing in opposite directions.

Where the losses landed

Montgomery^↗ lost more third-graders than any other district: 543 students, a 4.6% decline. Prince George's^↗ lost 403 (-4.0%), and Howard^↗ lost 201 (-4.7%). All three are large suburban systems where even modest percentage drops translate to hundreds of empty seats.

But the sharpest percentage declines hit smaller jurisdictions. Dorchester^↗ County lost 80 of its 361 third-graders, a 22.2% drop. Worcester^↗ lost 85 out of 491 (-17.3%). Carroll^↗ County fell 7.2%, and Frederick^↗ 5.2%. Only three of Maryland's 24 districts gained third-graders: Calvert (+31), Talbot (+24), and Allegany (+8).

The near-universality of the decline matters. When 21 of 24 districts lose students in the same grade in the same year, the explanation is structural. This is a cohort-size effect, not a policy failure in any single county.

Five cohorts, five trajectories

Tracking individual K classes as they age through the system reveals how differently each cohort moves.

The K-2019 class (63,779 kindergartners) followed a conventional trajectory, gaining students as it aged through elementary school. The K-2020 class (65,087) entered kindergarten just before the pandemic disrupted everything, and its progression was relatively normal. The K-2021 class (58,391) started far below the others, but has gained students at every grade since, absorbing children who delayed school entry. By Grade 5 in 2025-26, it had grown to 65,076, nearly closing the gap with older cohorts. The K-2022 bounce-back class (61,671) has been the largest post-COVID cohort at every grade it has passed through. And the K-2023 class (60,986) is tracking below its predecessor, continuing the downward pressure.

The K-2021 trough cohort's ability to grow as it ages is notable. It started at 58,391 and reached 65,076 by fifth grade, an increase of more than 6,600 students. Some of that growth reflects late school entry by students whose families held them out during the pandemic. Some reflects transfers into the public system. The data does not distinguish between the two.

The funding question

Maryland's Blueprint for Maryland's Future distributes funding on a weighted per-pupil basis. When a grade shrinks, the funding tied to those students shrinks with it. A 2,470-student decline in a single grade, at a statewide average above $17,000 per pupil, represents tens of millions in reduced per-pupil funding. Districts do not lose that money all at once, and some costs (building maintenance, administration) do not scale down with enrollment. The result is a structural mismatch between revenue that follows students and costs that follow buildings.

"One of the choices could be combining classes to make classes that are overly large or having classes that are smaller than we would normally prefer." — Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, WJLA, October 2025

Maryland superintendents have asked the governor to "hold harmless" school funding for 2026-27, recognizing that the enrollment decline is accelerating. The state's 1.1% enrollment decline in 2025-26 was the largest since the pandemic's initial shock.

What comes next

The COVID trough cohort (K-2021, now in fifth grade) will enter middle school in 2027-28. When it does, sixth grade will absorb a noticeably smaller class. But the bounce-back class (K-2022) will follow one year later, partly cushioning the blow. The problem is that every K class since the bounce-back has been smaller than the one before it: 60,986 in 2023, 60,514 in 2024, 59,562 in 2025, 59,204 in 2026.

Maryland is not experiencing a single disruption that will wash through the system and leave normalcy behind. The pandemic created a sharp one-year dip, but it landed on top of a decade-long decline in births. Even after the COVID trough passes through high school and graduates, the classes entering behind it will be smaller than anything the pre-pandemic system was built to serve.

The question for Maryland's 24 school districts is not when the wave passes. It is whether they can right-size operations for a system that, kindergarten class by kindergarten class, is becoming permanently smaller.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.