Amesbury Schools Enrollment Trends

Amesbury School Enrollment Trends

Enrollment = total number of students in the district  
Attrition = number of students who do not return to a district


Both numbers are calculated as of October 1st of a school year. The Enrollment number will tell you how many students are in a grade or district for that year. Attrition will tell you what % of students who were in the district last year are no longer in the district. 

For example if there were 100 students at the end of the year in 5th grade and 90 of those students were enrolled in the same district the next October then the attrition would be 10%.  If 6 other students moved in then the total enrollment for that grade would be 96.   The enrollment would be down by 4% but there would be an attrition of 10%. 

Enrollment and Attrition trends can provide an initial lens into the overall health of a district.

• Enrollment - Are parents choosing the district when they are buying a house or renting an apartment  -Is that indicated by increasing overall enrollment in early grades?

• Attrition - Are parents and students choosing another school?  Are we seeing spikes in attrition rates in certain grades? 

• Are there trends by subgroups? - Graduation Year, Gender, High Needs?

Why is this important? 

• School funding  - An older piece of analysis on why attrition matters

• Home prices  -  How do schools impact home value?

How to use the following tool  -

1.  select a graduation year from the 'graduation year' drop-down menu. for example select - 2019 you will see the following -
1. the class had 182 students in 2nd grade, 194 in 6th grade and 147 in 9th grade.
2.  The bar charts below show 23% in green.
3.  This equals 23% of the 8th grade class did not go to the high school
4.  Is this aligned with typical attrition rates?
   
2. go to 'grade level' filter at bottom of tool and select 8th grade  to look at 8th grade attrition trends
1. you will see a range from 8% to  17% attrition in the previous 6 years. 

You can repeat the process for other graduation years or grades and to identify positive or negative trends. We can then start to ask questions about why certain trends are happening.