Texas public schools lost about 76,000 students in the 2025-26 school year, the first enrollment decline outside the Covid-19 pandemic in nearly four decades, according to a Texas 2036 analysis.
Statewide enrollment fell 1.4%, and independent school district enrollment fell 1.7%. The drop came a year before Texas launched a statewide program that helps families pay for private school and homeschooling, adding to options like 529 plans for private elementary and high school.
Why It Matters
Nearly 60% of the losses came in grades K-5, according to Texas 2036. Smaller elementary classes move up through middle and high school for years, and they eventually reach colleges, where missed enrollment targets are already producing budget deficits.
Hispanic students accounted for about 81% of the losses. Mary Lynn Pruneda, director of education and workforce policy at Texas 2036, told KXAN the decline “is spread out across all types of students…so that makes it really hard to point to one particular thing.”
State-level reports like this one carry more weight now that the Education Department has stopped updating key school data.
What’s Driving The Decline
Texas 2036 and the experts KXAN interviewed point to several factors, including falling birth rates, the same demographic shift colleges are bracing for as closures pile up in 2026:
- Birth rates: The U.S. birth rate is now below 1.6 children per woman, under the 2.1 replacement rate
- Competition: Charter schools and private schools gained market share from traditional districts
- Geography: 18 of 20 Education Service Center regions lost students, with the sharpest drops in the Rio Grande Valley, Amarillo and Midland
- Population mismatch: Statewide population growth hasn’t translated into public school enrollment gains
How This Connects
Texas Education Freedom Accounts, the state’s new education savings account program, are now adding pressure. A total of 85,344 students confirmed enrollment for 2026-27, with awards of $10,474 per student for private school and up to $2,000 for homeschooling, Community Impact reported.
About 43% of selected students previously attended a Texas public school. A federal option arrives next, as the Education Freedom Tax Credit launches in 2027.
What’s Next
Texas 2036 projects roughly 100,000 fewer K-12 public school students by 2030.
The Texas Education Agency’s next annual enrollment count will be the first to reflect a full year of education savings accounts. More than half of states have already opted into the new federal scholarship tax credit, so Texas may not be the last state to post a decline like this.
Editor: Colin Graves
Robert Farrington is the founder of The College Investor and is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading voices on student loan debt and saving for college. He holds an MBA from UC San Diego Rady School of Management and has spent over 15 years researching, writing, and advising on student loans, 529 plans, financial aid programs, and saving and investing for young professionals.
Robert has been featured in the The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NBC News, and Forbes, where he has been a regular personal finance contributor for over a decade. His work combines both professional expertise and personal experience – he successfully navigated his own student loan repayment journey and has helped thousands of readers do the same.
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