Analysis: CUSD likely to start growing soon, becoming majority Hispanic

Hi Jonathan,

I’m curious about the last two charts in your analysis—the ones that project enrollment out ten years. Although you cite Ed-Data as the source for the charts I didn’t see the projections there so I’m assuming they are yours.

Could you share the methodology you used to develop these?

I see that your charts differ in enrollment by about 1000 students (You used different methodologies for each chart? Or the same methodology produced different results?) and also that not only will Hispanics be a majority (Hispanics are almost there now, of course) but by 2018, in ten years, they will constitute about two thirds of the student body with Whites making up only about 25% or so.

Those are dramatic changes, as you suggest, but I’m puzzled why you didn’t attempt to include such obvious factors as the ones you list: “new changes in demographic trends, the bursting housing bubble, changes in local employment patterns, and the state of the economy generally.”

These left-out factors might prove very important. For example, the rise in home values over the past ten years probably contributed to “white flight,” allowing parents to borrow against their rising home values to pay for expensive private schools. That might not be so easy now and that change in borrowing ability might contribute to a decrease in the rate of “white flight.” Or even an increase in White enrollment.

I just looked over the historical charts for home prices in California and it seems the escalation (the “bubble”) started right about the time that White enrollment began its decline. The possibility of a correlation is intriguing and if so would certainly have a big effect on any projection—and would work against your conclusion.

Another example is demographic changes. Your projections require a large increase in the number of Hispanic children to come true. That implies either a large increase in the number of Hispanic children born here or a large increase in the number if Hispanic people moving to this area (to name the two most obvious possibilities). Hospital records of increased birth rates or evidence of expectations of increased labor demand would go far to validate such projections.

If you left out all of these factors I’m curious about the ones you did include. Can you tell us more about your projection methodology?

Thanks,

—Darin

Comment 2 by Jonathan Lundell  on  Aug 10  at  9:34am  •  All my comments • 

Hey, Darin,

Thanks for the chance to provide a few footnotes. Yes, the projections are my own. They’re a simple extrapolation of the last ten years of change, which have been fairly steady. This is essentially the methodology used by the district’s 1996 master plan. I’d take it with a large grain of salt, especially given our experience with those projections, which turned out to be wrong.

I don’t claim any special powers of prediction here. If you like, read my projections this way: if current trends continue, this is what is likely to happen. If not, not.

Why not take other factors into consideration? I don’t know how we’d manage to come up with plausible numbers. Will a recession cause coastside residents to move their children from private to public school? That requires reliably predicting the length and depth of this recession—if indeed it is one. If you think you can do that, and reliably calculation the effect on CUSD enrollment, be my guest. But I’ll point out to you that the last ten years include the bursting of the tech bubble, which didn’t seem to have a noticeable effect on CUSD enrollment trends.

Census-based data isn’t very helpful, since it’s basically projections based on an every-ten-year sample. Hospital data? Which hospitals? How many home births are there on the coastside? Are detailed birth statistics, including home addresses, available from hospitals? I hope not.

Perhaps your point is that the district itself should be taking a closer look at its own demographics. If so, I entirely agree.

As to the two different projections, I’m sorry that my point didn’t come through more clearly. The first projection (fourth chart) projects top-line enrollment. That figure has been steadily dropping, and so does the projected enrollment.

The second projection (last chart) projects the three subgroups individually, and adds up the result. As you see, in this case, growing Hispanic enrollment eventually overwhelms falling white enrollment.

To a very large extent, the projections are little more than a curiosity. Those who have a better crystal ball than I do are free to argue with them. But the projections shouldn’t overshadow the simple fact that today we have for all intents and purposes a half-Hispanic district, and the district needs to adapt.