GENERATION - School enrollment statistics - Statistical Data Included

American Demographics, Sept, 2000 by Alison Stein Wellner

The faces and attitudes in America's classrooms are about to undergo a dramatic transformation - one that will shape consumer attitudes for years to come.

Children across the country are sharpening their pencils, loading up their backpacks, and sliding their legs under their pint-sized desks. But they're not the only ones heading back to school this month. Marketers, too, are gearing up to attract and entice today's youngest consumers. If you think it's a hard job these days, just wait. By 2010, everything that marketers know today about elementary-aged kids will be completely outdated. There will be a new generation of elementary school students - and a whole new generation of elementary schools.

In the next decade, primary school education in America will experience a tremendous period of transition. Enrollment of the lunchbox set, which has been on a steady increase over the past decade, will experience a small dip in the next five years, and then swoop up again by the end of the first decade of the new century. And, the faces that will make up that increase will include a healthy mix of races; diversity is on the verge of an explosion in America's grade schools.

Yet, the makeover is far from limited to people. The physical classroom is also expected to get a facelift. Thanks to technology, access to information will be unprecedented. The children of 2010 will have learning experiences that their parents could not have imagined when they first walked through the school gates. It's said that Gen Xers embraced computers in high school and college. Gen Ys were introduced to themin primary and/or secondary schools. Gen Z may be computer literate even before they get to school. For these kids, multimedia will be as prevalent in the classroom as the chalkboard. Lessons will be enriched in ways that would have left our mouths ajar five years ago.

For marketers, the lesson is this: Don't underestimate the power of this radically different educational experience. "Schools have always transmitted norms and values," says James E. Schnitz, education strategy executive for IBM's Global Education division, in Provo, Utah. The norms and values that this new generation will pick up in grade school will reverberate long after they've left their formal education behind. In 2010, marketers who sell to children are going to have to start all over again to figure out how to impress this new generation.

Talk to teachers today, and you'll hear about their struggle to cope with a veritable tsunami of students pouring into school each year. Between 1984 and 1997, the number of children enrolled in kindergarten through eighth grade increased by 21 percent. That's because of the large Gen Y population hitting the schools. Given that the much smaller Gen X group will be the primary parents of school-age kids by 2010, relief should be in sight, right? Unfortunately for strained school resources, the reprieve will be all too brief. Thanks to the small size of Gen X, and the expansion of childbearing years of Baby Boomers, a slight downturn in K-8 enrollment should occur for just five years - between 2003 and 2008, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Then enrollment will begin to climb again.

In fact, that Gen X dip will ultimately be outweighed by the increases that will follow, when you examine the decade as a whole. For public elementary schools, the average growth rate each year will be .02 percent, indicating that by 2010, schools will be just as crowded as they are today. Plus, trends that have developed because of the overcrowding, will continue into the next decade: Home schooling is expected to increase - as is the clamor for year-round class schedules. Since 1985, the number of schools with year-round schedules has increased by 16 percent, according to School, Home and Office Product Association (SHOPA), a trade organization for the school supply industry based in Dayton, Ohio. The number of children who are home schooled has been growing at a 15 percent rate each year, to 1.5 million children in the 1997-1998 school year, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association.

Tomorrow's students will defy easy classification. They will come from a wider mix of backgrounds, and will bring different experiences and ideas to their first years of education. "The demographics of American schools are dramatically changing, more so than any other time in American history," says Chad R. Wollery, former superintendent of the Dallas schools, and the president of HOSTS, which stands for Help One Student to Succeed, an educational materials company also in Dallas.

Between 2001 and 2010, the number of non-Hispanic white elementary school students will plummet by 2.1 million children, a decrease of 8 percent for children aged 5 to 9, and a decrease of 9 percent for children aged 10 to 14. The number of non-Hispanic black elementary school kids will experience a smaller decline. There will be 400,000 fewer blacks in elementary school by 2010, a decline of 3 percent for the 5- to 9-year-olds, and a decline of 10 percent for 10- to 14-year-olds. But since overall enrollment will be increasing steadily, kids of other racial and ethnic backgrounds will fill in the spaces vacated by white and black children. Between 2001 and 2010, the percentage of Hispanic children aged 5 to 9 will increase by 21 percent while the number of Hispanic 10- to 14-year-olds will increase by a whopping 29 percent. The number of Asian students aged 5 to 9 will increase by 22 percent by 2010, and the number of Asian students aged 10 to 14 will increase by 31 percent.