Montgomery Has 18% of Maryland’s Students but 28% of Its Enrollment Drop

This is Part 5 of Moderately MOCO’s investigation into MCPS enrollment. Part 1 found that every MCPS enrollment forecast since 2020 has come in too high. Part 2 looked at private school and homeschooling, Part 3 at three middle schools projected to be about half full, and Part 4 at what is behind this fall’s 4,083-student drop.

Montgomery County Public Schools is Maryland’s largest school system, with about 18% of the state’s public school students. Last year it accounted for about 28% of the state’s enrollment decline.

MCPS lost 3,131 students between the fall of 2024 and the fall of 2025, according to the Maryland State Department of Education’s official enrollment report. Statewide, enrollment fell by 11,322. Montgomery’s loss was the largest in Maryland by number, which is what the largest system would be expected to show. It was also steep for its size: a 1.97% decline, more than any other of the state’s seven largest systems and fourth-steepest of all 24.

This fall, MCPS’s preliminary count shows a further drop of 4,083. The state has not yet published official fall 2026 numbers for any school system, so the comparisons below use the official counts through September 2025.

Steeper than any other large system

Measured as a share of enrollment, Montgomery’s 1.97% decline last year was the fourth-steepest of Maryland’s 24 school systems. The three ahead of it are much smaller: Cecil County lost 2.68%, Dorchester 2.18% and Garrett 2.06%. Statewide, enrollment fell 1.27%.

Every one of the state’s largest systems lost students last year:

School system	Fall 2024	Fall 2025	Change	Change since fall 2019
Montgomery	159,181	156,050	-3,131 (-1.97%)	-5.58%
Baltimore County	110,024	107,983	-2,041 (-1.86%)	-6.13%
Prince George’s	132,151	130,629	-1,522 (-1.15%)	-3.92%
Howard	57,565	57,031	-534 (-0.93%)	-3.12%
Anne Arundel	85,029	84,256	-773 (-0.91%)	-0.86%
Baltimore City	76,807	76,340	-467 (-0.61%)	-3.60%
Frederick	48,054	47,884	-170 (-0.35%)	+9.25%
Maryland	891,553	880,231	-11,322 (-1.27%)	-3.21%

Excluding pre-kindergarten does not change the picture. Montgomery’s K-12 enrollment fell 1.81% last year, still fourth-steepest in the state.

Since 2019, a steeper drop than the state

MCPS enrollment peaked at 165,267 in the fall of 2019. By the fall of 2025 it was 156,050, a drop of 9,217 students, or 5.58%. That is the largest loss in the state by number and seventh-largest by percentage. Maryland as a whole fell 3.21% over the same period.

Among large systems, only Baltimore County fell faster, at 6.13%. Frederick County grew 9.25%.

We compared county enrollment from 2019 to 2023 in February 2024. At that point Montgomery was about 5,000 students below its peak.

Births fell faster here than almost anywhere in Maryland

Montgomery County resident births fell from 13,152 in 2015 to 10,858 in 2024, a 17.4% decline, according to the Maryland Department of Health’s vital statistics reports. Only Baltimore City, at 18.8%, fell more. Statewide, births fell 10.6%. Prince George’s fell 15.2% and Howard 15.4%. Frederick’s births rose 14.1%.

MCPS’s capital plan calls lower births “the main contributing factor to lower enrollment numbers.” Today’s kindergartners were born in 2021, and children born in 2024 will start kindergarten in 2029.

Private school and homeschooling

By our calculation from state data, Montgomery has the lowest homeschooling rate in Maryland and one of the highest shares of students in private school. Those counts are from a year before this fall’s drop, and the state’s published private school totals for Montgomery include repeated listings and other errors. Part 2 has the details.

What comes next

The state published last year’s official report in December 2025. This year’s edition will show whether other systems lost students at Montgomery’s pace this year.

MCPS’s preliminary figure has come in about 490 students above the official count in each of the last two years.

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