Projecting Enrollment in Rural Schools: A Study of Three Vermont School Districts

Large numbers of rural districts have experienced sharp declines in enrollment, unlike their suburban counterparts. Accurate enrollment projections are required, whether a district needs to build new schools or consolidate existing ones. For school districts having more than 600 students, a quantitative method such as the Cohort-Survival Ratio (C-SR) can be employed with a high level of confidence. For districts having fewer than 600 students, enrollment projections using quantitative methods may have diminishing accuracy. In the present study, enrollment projections were performed for three rural school districts in Vermont with populations fewer than 600 students. The objectives were to determine if (a) the C-SR method can be a viable alternative for school planners, (b) a lower enrollment threshold for employing quantitative techniques can be established, and (c) the number of years used to develop the survival ratio affects the accuracy of the projections. To test the accuracy of the C-SR method, enrollments were calculated for school years 1997-1998 to 2001-2002 and were compared to actual enrollments. Percent error rates were calculated for each school district for the prediction time period. The results showed that the C-SR method can be used cautiously to project enrollments for rural districts in the short-term, 1 to 3 years into the future, but loses its effectiveness in long-range planning. In addition, the results showed that the C-SR method could be used reliably for districts with as few as 100 students, which is a significantly lower threshold than reported in the literature.