On Monday, the House Committee on Public Education held a public hearing to discuss the “State of Education” in Texas, with a particular emphasis on assessing academic outcomes, enrollment trends, and school budgets. Among the many revelations to come to light was that public school enrollment continues to struggle.
According to Texas Education Agency (TEA) Commissioner Mike Morath’s invited testimony, public school enrollment decreased in the latest school year, shrinking from 5,544,255 in 2025 to 5,467,642 in 2026. That represents a loss of nearly 77,000 students or a 1.4% drop off.
The situation isn’t much improved over a longer time-horizon either.
From 2013 to 2020, K-12 institutions experienced modest growth, rising from 5,075,840 to 5,493,940. However, following several COVID-related controversies that included masks, threats of forced vaccinations, poor reading and math scores, and “pornographic images and substance” in school libraries, parents removed their kids from public schools in a big way, resulting in one-year decline of more than 122,000 students between 2020 and 2021.
Since that time, enrollment has slowly rebounded, rising from 5,371,586 in 2021 to 5,544,255 in 2025, before falling again in this most recent year.
Hence, at its present level, public school enrollment is effectively the same as it was in 2020. This fact raises some interesting questions about the direction of school district spending, taxes, and debt—and whether those trends are justifiable.
Source: TEA Commissioner Mike Morath testimony to the House Committee on Public Education hearing, May 11, 2026