What’s Behind MCPS’s 4,083-Student Drop

This is Part 4 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 found that about 15% of Montgomery students are in private school or homeschool, about the same share since 2010. Part 3 looked at three middle schools MCPS projects to be about half full after the March boundary vote.

Montgomery County Public Schools counted 151,967 students on September 30, a preliminary figure that is 4,083 fewer than a year earlier, according to MCPS’s October 15 presentation to the Board of Education. District officials largely cited falling birth rates, with fewer international students a smaller factor, Bethesda Magazine reported.

Readers have offered other explanations: families leaving the county, immigration enforcement, private schools and homeschooling. We went through MCPS’s records of students entering and leaving the system, its grade-by-grade counts, state birth and homeschool records and Census migration estimates to see which of those the numbers can currently support.

The largest single piece of this fall’s drop is a small kindergarten class. The change that has grown fastest, though, is in who arrives. MCPS took in about 3,300 fewer new students from other districts, states, private schools and countries in 2025-26 than it did two years earlier, and for three straight years more students have left the system than entered it.

Fewer students are arriving

MCPS tracks students who enter the system from somewhere else, whether another district, another state, a private school, homeschooling or another country. Those entries fell from 13,244 in 2023-24 to 11,847 in 2024-25 and 9,916 in 2025-26, according to MCPS’s capital plans from 2024, 2025 and 2026. In 2010-11, MCPS took in about 12,328.

Newcomers from other countries are part of that. MCPS’s International Admissions office processed 4,583 newcomer students in 2023-24 and 3,676 in 2024-25. From July through December of last year, it processed 1,544, compared with 2,787 over the same months a year earlier, according to figures MCPS gave the County Council’s education committee in January. In its written response to the committee, the office said, “MCPS has experienced a decline in newcomer enrollment over the past three years.”

Census estimates show the same direction for the county as a whole. These are estimates, not counts: between its once-a-decade census, the Census Bureau calculates yearly figures from birth and death records and estimates of who moved in and out, and it revises earlier years with each release. Net international migration into Montgomery County was 13,668 people in the year ending July 1, 2024, and 7,113 in the year ending July 1, 2025, according to the Census Bureau’s county population estimates. Net domestic migration, people moving between the county and the rest of the country, was negative 9,394 and negative 9,889 in those two years, a loss that has continued every year since 2020.

These sources do not record why a family left or did not come, and none cover the months right before this fall’s count. The Census estimates stop at July 2025. The newcomer figures we have stop in January.

Fewer students are leaving, but more leave than arrive

MCPS’s records do not show families pulling children out at a faster pace. Recorded withdrawals, students who leave for another district, state or country, a private school or homeschooling, went down three years in a row: 14,203 in 2023-24, 13,737 in 2024-25 and 12,660 in 2025-26, according to the same capital plans.

What changed is the balance. In 2010-11, MCPS recorded about 12,328 entries and 10,186 withdrawals, so roughly 2,100 more students arrived than left. In each of the last three school years, more students withdrew than entered: 959 more in 2023-24 and 1,890 more in 2024-25. For 2025-26, MCPS’s figures of 9,916 entries and 12,660 withdrawals put the gap at 2,744, though the same paragraph of the capital plan gives the difference as 1,738. The plan does not explain the discrepancy.

MCPS has also reported where some students went. In a March 3 presentation to the Board of Education, it showed a net loss of about 1,000 students a year to private schools and homeschooling combined: 1,111 in 2021-22, 715 in 2022-23, 1,081 in 2023-24 and 1,046 in 2024-25. The private school part of that loss fell from 892 to 648 over those years, while the homeschool part rose from 219 to 398. Montgomery Perspective highlighted the slide on Tuesday.

The same slide lists federal job losses as an enrollment factor: “Federal job losses/relocations out of the area in 2025 and early 2026, with an estimated 24,900+ federal positions eliminated, heavily impacted Montgomery County.” MCPS did not say how many students that accounted for.

Homeschooling has not grown since last year by the state’s count. Montgomery County had 3,014 homeschooled students as of April 30, 2026, down from 3,293 a year earlier, according to the Maryland State Department of Education. The state’s private school count for this fall is due around April 2027. Part 2 has the longer record on both.

The kindergarten class is the biggest single piece

MCPS enrolled 9,279 kindergartners this fall. Last year’s graduating class had 12,276 seniors in the state’s official count. That swap alone accounts for 2,997 of the 4,083 students.

That gap traces back to births. Montgomery County resident births peaked at 13,843 in 2007, according to MCPS’s capital plan, which cites state vital statistics. This year’s kindergartners were born in 2021, when there were 11,505. MCPS says in the same document that lower births are “the main contributing factor to lower enrollment numbers.”

Births are not the whole story for kindergarten, either. MCPS measures what it calls a capture rate, the share of county births five years earlier who enroll in kindergarten. It was 84.7% last year and 80.7% this year, according to MCPS. Kindergarten fell by 598 students from last year’s official count. By our arithmetic, the smaller birth year accounts for about 140 of them, and the lower capture rate accounts for about 460.

MCPS’s records do not say where those families went instead. Private school, homeschooling, a move out of the county and waiting a year to start kindergarten would all show up the same way. Writing about the capture rate on Tuesday, Montgomery Perspective’s Adam Pagnucco concluded that “one or more of three things are becoming increasingly common for children born in MoCo: they are going to private school, going into home schooling and/or are moving out.”

Superintendent Thomas Taylor pointed to births in a message to staff on October 15. “We are experiencing significant changes to the birthrate (national issue; we are not alone), and it is hitting us hard. Our enrollment decline will likely continue for some time,” he wrote. MoCo Show published the message.

The rest of the drop, 1,269 students, is the net change as students moved up a grade. Pre-kindergarten programs grew by 183.

Births also do not explain why MCPS missed its own forecast. Last fall, when the births behind this year’s kindergarten class had already happened, MCPS projected 155,374 students for this school year. The count came in 3,407 lower, with the shortfall spread across nearly every grade. Part 1 covered how every MCPS forecast since 2020 has come in too high.

What would settle it

• The official fall count by grade, which the state publishes around December. MCPS’s preliminary count has come in about 490 students above the official one in each of the last two years.
• MCPS withdrawal records by destination for 2025-26 and this summer, after the years in the March presentation, which would show how many students left for private school, homeschooling, another district or another country.
• The state’s private school count as of September 30, 2026, due around April 2027.
• Census migration estimates through July 2026, due around March 2027.

We have tracked MCPS enrollment by grade before, including five years of grade-level counts and the 3,500-student elementary decline from 2018 to 2022.

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