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America Counts: Stories Behind the Numbers
3- and 4-Year-Old School Enrollment Rebounds From Pandemic Low
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed many parents’ home and work lives, with some changes like shuttered schools and remote learning leading to a drop in enrollment of children ages 3 and 4. But new data show enrollment has started to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels.
The 2022 Current Population Survey shows that the share of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in all U.S. schools, both federally funded and private, increased by 13.0 percentage points from 40.3% in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, to 53.3% in 2022 when the pandemic emergency ended. There was a smaller change in enrollment of students ages 5 to 17 during that period.
In this article, we focus on changes in school enrollment of children ages 3 and 4.
The share of these children enrolled in school in 2022 was up by 2.9 percentage points from 2021 and 13.0 percentage points from 2020. School enrollment for this group in 2022 was not statistically different than it was in 2018 and 2019.
Continue reading to learn more about enrollment for:
- Hispanic 3- and 4-year-olds
- Non-Hispanic Black 3- and 4-year-olds
- Non-Hispanic White 3- and 4-year-olds
- Other race, non-Hispanic 3- and 4-year-olds
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