Analyzing the Decline: A Closer Look at MCPS Middle School Enrollment Trends

Background and Source Data

Middle school enrollment in MCPS was analyzed for the years 2018 to 2022.

Official enrollment numbers are found in the “Official Reports of Enrollment” on the MCPS Office of Shared Accountability web page.

Results and Conclusions

The number of students per year is shown. The year indicates enrollment on Sept 30 of that year, i.e., 2022 is for the 2022-2023 school year or class of 2023.  Color coding indicates a cohort class throughout middle school, e.g., the middle school class of 2023 is colored yellow, and it had 12,262 6^th graders in fall 2020 and 12,214 8^th graders in fall of 2022.

The number of students per a particular grade each year has varied. 2018 and 2022 numbers were compared. Eighth grade had the largest increase (223 students), while 6^th grade had the largest decrease (584 students).

	2018	2022	Change in Student Number
Grade 6	12,318	11,734	-584
Grade 7	12,180	11,908	-272
Grade 8	11,991	12,214	223

The individual class cohorts showed an increase in students between grades 6 and 7 from 2018 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022.  The class cohorts showed a decrease in students between grades 6 and 7 from 2019 to 2020 and from 2020 to 2021.

Cohort Year 1	Cohort Year 2	Color	Change in Student Number
Grade 6 2018	Grade 7 2019	Light blue	241
Grade 6 2019	Grade 7 2020	Light green	-121
Grade 6 2020	Grade 7 2021	Yellow	-170
Grade 6 2021	Grade 7 2022	Orange	176

The individual class cohorts showed an increase in students between grades 7 and 8 from 2018 to 2019 and from 2021 to 2022.  The class cohorts showed a decrease in students between grades 7 and 8 from 2019 to 2020 and from 2020 to 2021.

Cohort Year 1	Cohort Year 2	Color	Change in Student Number
Grade 7 2018	Grade 8 2019	Red	143
Grade 7 2019	Grade 8 2020	Light blue	-152
Grade 7 2020	Grade 8 2021	Light green	-151
Grade 7 2021	Grade 8 2022	Yellow	122

The overall total middle students in grades 6 through 8 by year was:

• 2018: 36,489
• 2019: 37,637
• 2020: 37,303
• 2021: 36,307
• 2022: 35,856

The middle school enrollment has declined each year beginning in 2019 (by 334 students, 996 students, and 451 students).

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