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Are Private Schools About to Let a Crisis Go to Waste?
Covid 19 had a profound impact on the North American K-12 educational ecosystem. Due to restrictions in in-person learning, teaching modalities shifted dramatically and rapidly, school administrators’ and staff members’ ingenuity and commitment were taxed to the maximum, and school finances were significantly impacted. Public school learning was, in general, more restrictive than private school learning, and this caused increased interest in and enrollment in private schools and in home-based schooling.
During the first full year of the pandemic, 2020/21, public school enrollment in the United States decreased by 3% or 1.4 million students. Based on research in conducted by The Associated Press and data journalists at Stanford University’s Big Local News an estimated one-third of these students entered private schools, with the balance engaged in home schooling or unaccounted for.
This article will explore the near term impact of the pandemic on the typical private day school’s new enrollment and student retention and its finances utilizing data from NAIS’ DASL database. It will also discuss the emerging imperatives for school leaders desiring to optimize their schools’ longer term competitive positions in the post pandemic world.
Independent Schools’ Pandemic Performance Yielded Impressive Gains
As can be seen below, many private schools responded heroically and creatively to the pandemic and achieved material gains as a result. An analysis of the performance of the roughly 1,500 day schools that provided 2019/2020-2022/23 information via the NAIS DASL dataset indicates that the median day school experienced strong gains in enrollment, net tuition dollars and annual giving. Furthermore, the median school experienced relatively stable performance in student retention, tuition realization and net operating surpluses by 2022/23.
Are Independent Schools Building Long Term Competitive Advantage?
Now, as the pandemic’s impact fades and public schools return to more normal operating modalities, in a potentially recessionary environment, a relevant question is: Are Independent Schools taking appropriate actions to capitalize on their perceived value gains by making the kinds of strategic investments that would reinforce their advantage or not?
Early indications are that the answer to this question is somewhat mixed.
On the positive side, teacher salaries per student in the median independent school have increased 11% since 2019/20. However, given annual inflation rates running in the high single digits this falls far short of making teachers whole on an inflation adjusted basis, not to mention on providing them with rewards for their constancy and commitment that would motivate their retention. At the same time, student to faculty ratios have increased modestly in the median school and professional development spending has declined about 20% versus pre-pandemic levels.
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's eaNow, as the pandemic’s impact fades and public schools return to more normal operating modalities, in a potentially recessionary environment, a relevant question is: Are Independent Schools taking appropriate actions to capitalize on their perceived value gains by making the kinds of strategic investments that would reinforce their advantage or not? Early indications are that the answer to this question is somewhat mixed.sy.
What Do Independent School Leaders Need to Do to Build Sustainable Advantage Relative to Public Schools?
The simple answer is to reverse the abovementioned potential barriers to educational quality and the day school value proposition story. Faculty salaries need to be increased to, at a minimum, better mirror inflation rates. Student to Faculty ratios, which are a cornerstone of perceived and actual competitive advantage for Independent schools, need to be closely monitored and maintained if not modestly decreased. Finally, professional development needs to be increased significantly to ensure faculty members are continually growing in their skills. Now is not the time for private schools to be complacent. Rather, now is the time to seize the moment and take steps to reinforce the superior value of private schools for the long term via investments which will offer a strong return in the form of increased enrollment gains.
A failure to do so could well result in a loss of pandemic era enrollment gains and accelerate staff attrition. We urge your school to document its own performance in the areas identified above and act where needed to ensure private education’s gains are sustained in the long term. The upside is significant and exciting!