A Special Back-to-School Report: The Baby Boom Echo

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Twenty-five years after the baby boom generation set a national record for school enrollment at 51.3 million students, the record is about to be broken. It is fitting that the children of the baby boomers are doing the record breaking.

With 51.7 million children going to school this fall -- a new national record -- we have a lot of children in our schools striving for excellence. Demographers call this phenomenon the baby boom echo. This special back-to-school report seeks to describe the many aspects of this baby boom echo and its implications for education.

One thing is clear: With so many young people coming of age and needing a quality education to prepare for the future, America will surely be tested on whether we will invest in time, energy and resources so that these children and this nation can look to the future with confidence.

Some will certainly look at this rising wave of students as a liability, but in the long run they are a tremendous asset to our nation -- if we educate them well. If we commit now to giving these young people a first-class education, we can assure ourselves that they will grow up to be independent, self-sufficient, and responsible citizens. Equally important for baby boomers now starting to contemplate their retirement, these young people represent the work force of tomorrow -- the very people who will be working to support the baby boomers in retirement.

The facts of the baby boom echo speak for themselves. The 1996-97 school year represents only the mid-point of a 20-year trend of rising school enrollments. By the year 2006, America's schools will have to educate 54.6 million children -- almost 3 million more than today.

Four key factors account for rising enrollments. The most significant factor, accounting for half of the current growth rate, is a delay in marriage and child-bearing among baby boomers. A high birth rate among African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans and other minorities is a second important reason why enrollment is on the rise.

Increased immigration represents a third factor. School systems in America's gateway cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Miami, have been the first to feel the direct impact of new immigration patterns. A fourth trend is that larger numbers of children are enrolled in pre-K and kindergarten and more young people are staying in school to get their high school diplomas. In 1995, 37 percent of 3-year-olds, 61 percent of 4-year-olds, and 90 percent of 5-year-olds were enrolled in center-based programs or kindergarten. Overall, the dropout rate for 16-to-24-year-olds has declined from 14 percent in 1982 to 12 percent in 1994.

What makes this growth trend different from the surge in the late 1960s is that this current growth trend is a long, slow, rising wave, and we see no immediate fall-off. Educators faced with rising enrollment in the 1960s could anticipate a sharp decline in the need to build schools in the 1970s. Many schools districts, therefore, met the demand for schooling by using portable classrooms and/or going to double sessions. Today, some school districts are already using many of these stop-gap strategies, which may not be sufficient to accommodate the continued growth in the years ahead.

Much of the growth is in the Far West and the Southeast. In all, 33 states face rising enrollments while 17 states and the District of Columbia will see a decline in their overall student population. School enrollment will increase by 14 percent in the West and 6.3 percent in the South, while the school-age population in the North and the Midwest remains basically stable.

California, the state that often leads America into the future, is the epicenter of school enrollment pressures. In 1996, a total of 5.8 million children will answer school bells all over California. Ten years from now, 6.9 million children will be attending schools in California, an 18.3 percent increase for a total of 1,063,000 students. Other states facing sharply escalating enrollments include Texas, Washington, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, and New Jersey. The District of Columbia, North Dakota and Maine will see the sharpest fall-off in overall student population.

America's elementary and secondary schools will also become more diverse in the next 10 years. Between 1995 and the year 2005, for example, Hispanic-Americans between the ages of 5 and 17 will increase by 2.4 million. African-Americans in this same age group will increase by 1.1 million. Asian-Americans and other minorities will number an additional 1.1 million. In contrast, the White non-Hispanic student population will grow more slowly, increasing by only 500,000 over the same 10-year span.

Much of the pressure to build schools is occurring in suburban areas as a result of out-migration from cities and the number of young people who now make up the baby boom echo. "Between 1985 and 1990, 103 million Americans moved," said Harold L. Hodgkinson, a demographer with the Institute for Educational Leadership. "During the 1980s, we left small towns, rural areas, and center cities and moved to the suburbs, where over half of Americans now live." As a result, many suburban school systems have been pushed to the limit to meet rising enrollments. In suburban Atlanta, Gwinnett County Public Schools Superintendent Alvin Wilbanks said, "Gwinnett County has to build three new classrooms every week for the rest of the decade."

A current feature of the baby boom echo is well worth noting -- a significant number of the young people who make-up the baby boom echo are approaching their teen years and they will soon be filling up our nation's high schools. In the next 10 years, public high school enrollment is expected to increase by 15 percent. California, for example, will have to find seats for an additional 525,000 high school students. Other states that will see significant increase in high school enrollments include Virginia (25.4 percent), North Carolina (24.9 percent), New Jersey (24.9 percent) and Maryland (24.6 percent). Six states -- Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Florida, and Maryland -- will see an increase of 30 percent or more in the number of high school graduates.

What are we to make of all this growth and the implications that educators and policy makers need to think through?

For many parents the foremost issue is the size of their children's schools and whether their children get the needed individual attention. In 1992-1993 the average elementary school had 464 students and the average secondary school had 689 students. School districts in many high-growth areas will be hard pressed to meet this average. A recent study by the National Association of Secondary School Principals, titled Breaking Ranks: Changing an American Institution, suggests that our nation's schools become more "personalized." It recommends organizing schools into "units of no more than 600 students so that teachers and students can get to know each other better."

Class size is a persistent issue, and it will be even more so in the coming years. In 1993-94 the national average for class size was 25.2 students in elementary schools and 23.2 for secondary schools. Many of the states that already have large schools and crowded classrooms will be the states that continue to have significant enrollment increases. In the next 10 years, more than 6,000 new schools must be built to accommodate the children who make up the baby boom echo. Many local school boards, therefore, will face the task of finding the resources to build new schools and recruit additional well-trained teachers to keep class size down.

In addition, many school districts are already renovating and updating school buildings to meet the demand to get new technologies into the classroom. Modernizing schools and investing in technology will also require additional financial resources. Florida, for example, has spent $75 million modernizing 322 schools over the last three years. As we have seen most recently with California's Net Day, the American people are eager to invest in their children's future and ingenious and inexpensive ways can be found to get the job done.

As we move into this new Information Age, America must have a high quality teaching force that can excite and energize all of our young people. We estimate that America's schools will need an additional 190,000 teachers in the next 10 years. Some former teachers who are re-entering the profession to meet this new demand will have to brush up on their skills to teach to new high standards. Our colleges that prepare teachers must ensure that their graduates are ready to teach to these new high standards and to use new technologies as effective teaching tools.

Teachers must also learn new ways to involve parents in the learning process. Thirty years of research tells us that the starting point of putting children on the road to excellence is parental involvement in their children's education. The American family is the rock on which a solid education can and must be built. Yet, too often parents remain the missing link in the education equation in too many schools and for too many students.

On another front, the rising tide of high school students suggests that there may be greater competition to gain admission to our nation's colleges and universities in a few short years. America's young people know the value of a good college education and many more of them expect to get a college education. Now is the time for parents of middle school and junior high students to sit down with their children and chart a course that will prepare those youngsters for a college education.

By the year 2006 college enrollments will climb to 16.4 million, an increase of 14 percent from 1996, adding two million more students to college rolls. California's system of public higher education is already under great pressure to accommodate the rising demand for a college education.

Finding ways to finance the college education of all of these young people should be very high on our national agenda in the immediate future. In my opinion, no high school student who works hard to make the grade should be denied the opportunity to get a college education because he or she cannot afford to go to college. Access to higher education has been part of our national purpose for well over 50 years and we cannot close this door of opportunity.

Another factor of consequence: Many more of our young people are now living in poverty. In 1970, near the peak of the last enrollment high, the number of young people living in poverty barely exceeded 10 million. In 1995, the number of young people who were struggling reached 15.7 million. The sheer drag of poverty can deter even the brightest young person. As a nation, we need to get our priorities straight. Changing our expectations of what poor and disadvantaged children can achieve is central to helping them to learn their way out of poverty. The era of dumbing down American education is over, and nothing will be gained by continuing to give some young people living in poverty a watered- down curriculum.

Many of the young people who make up this baby boom echo are entering their teen years, struggling with all the many ups and downs that are a part of adolescence and coming of age. We can take their education for granted and allow these young people to drift through school, shaped by peer pressure and the pop culture that surrounds them. Or we can look to the future and recognize that now is the time to mold their character, teach them basic American values, help them to become good citizens, and give them an education of high quality. To my way of thinking, there is no more important task for this nation in this post-Cold War era than helping American families in the education of their children.

America's task is to mobilize all of our citizens and resources to give all of our young people the education they deserve. We must make sure that they learn how to read and learn the core academic subjects to high standards; that they go to schools that are havens of order and safety; that we set the highest standards for our teaching profession; that we make sure that every school in this nation offers students access to computers and the Internet; and that we keep open wide the doors of opportunity that lead to a higher education.

Above all, we must recognize that our schools cannot do it alone. Every part of the broader American community must pull together to give all of our young people the opportunity to gain an education of high quality. The success and freedom of being an American in this day and age is the freedom of excellence -- the ability to be highly educated and highly trained, to negotiate a complex economic environment, and to become productive and responsible citizens.

Credits

On August 21, 1996, the U.S. Department of Education issued"A Special Back-to-School Report: The Baby Boom Echo." This is the Secretary's statement, which makes up the main text of the report. Also in the report (but not in this version) are charts and graphs, which are available in the Online Library at: http://www.ed.gov/NCES/bbecho/