The Class of 2032: The Companion White Paper to the Class of 2014
By Kari M. Arfstrom, Ph.D.
Originally published August, 2014 with periodic updates
Children who were born in 2014 will make up the vast majority of students graduating from high school in 2032. That is, of course, if the “traditional” form of elementary and secondary schools that most of us experienced is still the normal path for an American education in eighteen years. This paper won’t comment on what schools will look like, and how learning occurs over the next two decades, but it explores and projects what school leaders can anticipate of their students who were born in 2014.
School superintendents, principals, board members, along with curriculum and instruction, technology, purchasing, transportation, and facility managers need to start planning now for the Class of 2032, a full five years before the Kindergarten class even enters the school house. While the demographics of the class of 2032 are quite different than say the graduating class of 2014 (see the companion White Paper titled The Class of 2014 for a comparison), it is possible to extrapolate from government surveys and census data who will be knocking on your doors in a few years and who will be in a cap and gown 13 years later with better than average projections.
Class of 2032 - As the '14 year birth cohort enters the world someone more clever than I will name this new generation since the last grouping of children were named "the Millennials" who are now ages 19-35. With 3,957,577 births in '14 fewer students will make up the class of 2032 than in previous years so overall class sizes will be reduced in many states by 10%. Their mothers are older, better educated with a higher income, and again depending on what state you live in, more than likely be a child from a first or second generation immigrant family whose country of origin speaks Spanish in their home. Any increases to the student body will likely come from legal or undocumented immigrants, or inter-transient families, who usually move within the U.S. for employment opportunities. Nationally, the majority of students in this cohort will be non-White (although this will vary by state and, more specifically, by county and city). While not a significant factor in the overall population of a national birth cohort, international adoptions do add to the number of students. In 2013, there were only 8,668 adoptions, significantly down from past years.
Natural Birth Rate - The U.S. has not had a “birth replacement rate,” which is 2.1 children per woman since 2007, the statistical number needed for two parents to replace themselves. There are two factors influencing the U.S. natural birth rate occurring at opposite ends of the age spectrum for women of childbearing years.
First is the continued decline in births to women ages 14-19. While the number of births to teen girls has been falling since 2007, in the past year the rate declined by 10%, which is at an all-time low. At the other end of the spectrum there was a significant increase in women older than 35 giving birth for the first time. For every 1,000 women between the ages of 35-39 they averaged 11.0 births (compare that to 1997 when it was 7.9). For women between 40-44 the birth rate per 1,000 increased to 2.3 births (again compared to 1997 when it was 1.5). Similar increased birth rates were reported for older-than-average-first-time moms of all races and ethnicity.
School leaders should prepare for parents who will be even more involved in their youngsters’ education - we are going from helicopter parents to drone parenting. Since the current trend is for women to have their first (and only) child in their late 30s and 40s, with a decline in second children, teachers will have many more students who are singletons. As far as health of the babies being born in 2014, women are having fewer Cesarean deliveries and fewer preterm deliveries with average birth weights so we can project that women are having healthier babies.
Immigration - Besides birth or international adoptions, the other major factor influencing the national (and ultimately school) population is legal and undocumented immigration. School leaders must plan now for an increase in students born outside of the U.S. and whose first language is generally not English. Note, since very few U.S. citizens emigrate out of the States that is not a significant factor in the overall population change.
In 2013, the most recent data released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency that now provides this type of information (formerly it was the U.S. Justice Department). That year 990,553 “legal permanent immigrants” entered the U.S., down from over a million people per year in each of the previous eight years. Most documented immigrants (as they were formerly called in Federal Government reports) arrived from Asia (40%); Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean (31%); Africa (10%); Europe (9%); and South America (8%).
Also for the same year there were 779,929 new naturalized citizens, with the top five countries being Mexico, India, the Philippines, Dominican Republic and China. Of the new U.S. citizens, 55% were women with a majority in their childbearing years. While any children they have in the U.S. will automatically be Americans citizens, the language spoken at home in the child’s formative years will still affect the need for ELL services at school and must be monitored by district officials.
The Department of Homeland Security no longer tracks undocumented (a.k.a. illegal) immigrants as the previous federal agency did, but discusses in great detail the various “non-immigrant” categories, which include: Tourists and Business Travelers, College Students and Exchange Visitors, Temporary Workers and their families, Diplomats and their families, All Other Classes, and Unknowns. They also go into detail on the number of Aliens Apprehended, Aliens Found Inadmissible, Aliens Returned, and Aliens Removed by Criminal Status, and the countries they came from and were sent back to. Despite the lack of useful government statistics, we know from media reports that undocumented immigrants are coming into the U.S., including many school-aged children, often unaccompanied by a parent, but exact numbers or ages are unknown. While there are plenty of questions that school leaders must be asking the U.S. government is not helping by failing to supply the information that schools need to adequately project for the needs of all their students in the near future.
Enrollment - For schools in the Midwest and Central Plains states, your enrollment may be so low that schools can barely gather enough children for pre-K and Kindergarten classes. Yet parents will be expecting full-day classes since finding quality day care and nursery schools will be limited in those parts of the country, as most mothers will continue to work outside the home. With the record number of retirements within your district finding qualified staff will become problematic.
In other parts of the country, particularly those states closer to the coasts and southern states, the early grades will be bursting at the seams as first and second generation children of both legal and undocumented immigrants fill classrooms. Parents will also demand full-day services with intense language acquisition programs, again because day care is expensive and hard to find for working parents. These districts are also losing teachers to retirement at an alarming rate, meaning more credentialed teachers will need to be hired, and, given the characteristics of the students being taught, multilingual teachers will be at a premium.
Elementary School -As the future class of 2032 moves into early elementary classes a greater emphasis will be placed on reading, and by 3rd grade (barring dramatic changes in current trends) they will need to be proficient in taking standardized tests. Once they’ve master reading, a greater concentration on mathematics and the sciences will begin in middle elementary school.
Children in the class of 2032 will be maturing physically and emotionally faster, developing cognitively quicker, and will be more aware of cultural, political and social events due to their constant connectedness to the Internet. No longer will schools enforce bans on technology, but in many cases will ask students to bring their own technology to make up for the lack of budget to buy necessary equipment. K-12 schools will need to offer high speed wireless access, and will need to offer connectivity to 2-3 times more devices than the actual number of users since everyone in the school - students, educators, staff, and administrators - will have more than one device needing wi-fi access.
Secondary School - For students in the class of 2032, taking online classes will be the norm. Schools will need to redesign course schedules and class catalogs to accommodate learning outside of the traditional 8am-3pm school day and beyond the walls of the school buildings. Students, along with their mentor teacher, will create personalized learning plans that may include global-awareness projects or local community service events.
Students will no longer be grouped by age, but by interests and abilities. Learners will move among peer groups as they explore their interests, as projects are fulfilled, or interest in topics wane. As your more self-directed students master their subjects and content, they will move quickly to the next course, often graduating ahead of their age-cohort. Conversely, other students will need additional time and personal assistance to meet mastery requirements, which means they may graduate later than the traditional 18 years.
Exposing students to career exploration and workforce options at a much earlier age will be necessary as the United States fights to maintain its global status. Starting at an early age and then ramping up by middle school, schools must get better at exposing students to the needs of the U.S. job market to stay competitive with the rest of the world.
Employment- Hiring teachers will become even harder for school leaders in the future since Schools of Education are not training the type of teachers schools need for diverse learning systems, technology, and diverse study body. Districts must develop year-long mentorship programs with retired or close-to-retiring teachers mentoring new teachers, who may be career changers and who, more than likely, received most of their teaching degree online. Again as districts hire teachers, multilingual teachers will be at a premium, particularly those with with a passing knowledge of language and culture of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) because that is where many of your student will be hailing from, and competing and working along side in the future. Finding qualified principals, administrative staff and superintendents will continue to be difficult. Districts with shrinking enrollments will need to consider co-administrators, increased cooperative purchasing and training, and shared contractual obligations.
By closely examining the birth rates, the documented and undocumented immigration rates, and other transient tendencies of your community, school leaders can project who will be knocking at your door in five years and what services they will need to develop into civic minded young adults at age eighteen.
School and Community Leaders: A version of this paper can be personalized for your district. In person or virtual presentations can also be arranged. Contact Arfstrom Consulting for pricing and availability.
Media and publisher requests encouraged for K-12 demographic and forecasting topics.
Sources:
Births: Preliminary Data for 2013. National Vital Statistics Reports. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_02.pdf
First Births to Older Women Continue to Rise: 2014, NCHS Data Brief. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db152.pdf
Intercountry Adoption, 2013. U.S. Department of State. http://adoption.state.gov/about_us/statistics.php
Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2011, Department of Homeland Security. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2011/ois_yb_2011.pdf
U.S. Lawful Permanent Residents: 2013. Annual Flow Report. Department of Homeland Security http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_lpr_fr_2013.pdf
Public Education Finance: 2012. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/12f33pub.pdf
School Enrollment in the United States: 2011, Population Characteristics. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-571.pdf
School superintendents, principals, board members, along with curriculum and instruction, technology, purchasing, transportation, and facility managers need to start planning now for the Class of 2032, a full five years before the Kindergarten class even enters the school house. While the demographics of the class of 2032 are quite different than say the graduating class of 2014 (see the companion White Paper titled The Class of 2014 for a comparison), it is possible to extrapolate from government surveys and census data who will be knocking on your doors in a few years and who will be in a cap and gown 13 years later with better than average projections.
Class of 2032 - As the '14 year birth cohort enters the world someone more clever than I will name this new generation since the last grouping of children were named "the Millennials" who are now ages 19-35. With 3,957,577 births in '14 fewer students will make up the class of 2032 than in previous years so overall class sizes will be reduced in many states by 10%. Their mothers are older, better educated with a higher income, and again depending on what state you live in, more than likely be a child from a first or second generation immigrant family whose country of origin speaks Spanish in their home. Any increases to the student body will likely come from legal or undocumented immigrants, or inter-transient families, who usually move within the U.S. for employment opportunities. Nationally, the majority of students in this cohort will be non-White (although this will vary by state and, more specifically, by county and city). While not a significant factor in the overall population of a national birth cohort, international adoptions do add to the number of students. In 2013, there were only 8,668 adoptions, significantly down from past years.
Natural Birth Rate - The U.S. has not had a “birth replacement rate,” which is 2.1 children per woman since 2007, the statistical number needed for two parents to replace themselves. There are two factors influencing the U.S. natural birth rate occurring at opposite ends of the age spectrum for women of childbearing years.
First is the continued decline in births to women ages 14-19. While the number of births to teen girls has been falling since 2007, in the past year the rate declined by 10%, which is at an all-time low. At the other end of the spectrum there was a significant increase in women older than 35 giving birth for the first time. For every 1,000 women between the ages of 35-39 they averaged 11.0 births (compare that to 1997 when it was 7.9). For women between 40-44 the birth rate per 1,000 increased to 2.3 births (again compared to 1997 when it was 1.5). Similar increased birth rates were reported for older-than-average-first-time moms of all races and ethnicity.
School leaders should prepare for parents who will be even more involved in their youngsters’ education - we are going from helicopter parents to drone parenting. Since the current trend is for women to have their first (and only) child in their late 30s and 40s, with a decline in second children, teachers will have many more students who are singletons. As far as health of the babies being born in 2014, women are having fewer Cesarean deliveries and fewer preterm deliveries with average birth weights so we can project that women are having healthier babies.
Immigration - Besides birth or international adoptions, the other major factor influencing the national (and ultimately school) population is legal and undocumented immigration. School leaders must plan now for an increase in students born outside of the U.S. and whose first language is generally not English. Note, since very few U.S. citizens emigrate out of the States that is not a significant factor in the overall population change.
In 2013, the most recent data released by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency that now provides this type of information (formerly it was the U.S. Justice Department). That year 990,553 “legal permanent immigrants” entered the U.S., down from over a million people per year in each of the previous eight years. Most documented immigrants (as they were formerly called in Federal Government reports) arrived from Asia (40%); Mexico, Central America or the Caribbean (31%); Africa (10%); Europe (9%); and South America (8%).
Also for the same year there were 779,929 new naturalized citizens, with the top five countries being Mexico, India, the Philippines, Dominican Republic and China. Of the new U.S. citizens, 55% were women with a majority in their childbearing years. While any children they have in the U.S. will automatically be Americans citizens, the language spoken at home in the child’s formative years will still affect the need for ELL services at school and must be monitored by district officials.
The Department of Homeland Security no longer tracks undocumented (a.k.a. illegal) immigrants as the previous federal agency did, but discusses in great detail the various “non-immigrant” categories, which include: Tourists and Business Travelers, College Students and Exchange Visitors, Temporary Workers and their families, Diplomats and their families, All Other Classes, and Unknowns. They also go into detail on the number of Aliens Apprehended, Aliens Found Inadmissible, Aliens Returned, and Aliens Removed by Criminal Status, and the countries they came from and were sent back to. Despite the lack of useful government statistics, we know from media reports that undocumented immigrants are coming into the U.S., including many school-aged children, often unaccompanied by a parent, but exact numbers or ages are unknown. While there are plenty of questions that school leaders must be asking the U.S. government is not helping by failing to supply the information that schools need to adequately project for the needs of all their students in the near future.
Enrollment - For schools in the Midwest and Central Plains states, your enrollment may be so low that schools can barely gather enough children for pre-K and Kindergarten classes. Yet parents will be expecting full-day classes since finding quality day care and nursery schools will be limited in those parts of the country, as most mothers will continue to work outside the home. With the record number of retirements within your district finding qualified staff will become problematic.
In other parts of the country, particularly those states closer to the coasts and southern states, the early grades will be bursting at the seams as first and second generation children of both legal and undocumented immigrants fill classrooms. Parents will also demand full-day services with intense language acquisition programs, again because day care is expensive and hard to find for working parents. These districts are also losing teachers to retirement at an alarming rate, meaning more credentialed teachers will need to be hired, and, given the characteristics of the students being taught, multilingual teachers will be at a premium.
Elementary School -As the future class of 2032 moves into early elementary classes a greater emphasis will be placed on reading, and by 3rd grade (barring dramatic changes in current trends) they will need to be proficient in taking standardized tests. Once they’ve master reading, a greater concentration on mathematics and the sciences will begin in middle elementary school.
Children in the class of 2032 will be maturing physically and emotionally faster, developing cognitively quicker, and will be more aware of cultural, political and social events due to their constant connectedness to the Internet. No longer will schools enforce bans on technology, but in many cases will ask students to bring their own technology to make up for the lack of budget to buy necessary equipment. K-12 schools will need to offer high speed wireless access, and will need to offer connectivity to 2-3 times more devices than the actual number of users since everyone in the school - students, educators, staff, and administrators - will have more than one device needing wi-fi access.
Secondary School - For students in the class of 2032, taking online classes will be the norm. Schools will need to redesign course schedules and class catalogs to accommodate learning outside of the traditional 8am-3pm school day and beyond the walls of the school buildings. Students, along with their mentor teacher, will create personalized learning plans that may include global-awareness projects or local community service events.
Students will no longer be grouped by age, but by interests and abilities. Learners will move among peer groups as they explore their interests, as projects are fulfilled, or interest in topics wane. As your more self-directed students master their subjects and content, they will move quickly to the next course, often graduating ahead of their age-cohort. Conversely, other students will need additional time and personal assistance to meet mastery requirements, which means they may graduate later than the traditional 18 years.
Exposing students to career exploration and workforce options at a much earlier age will be necessary as the United States fights to maintain its global status. Starting at an early age and then ramping up by middle school, schools must get better at exposing students to the needs of the U.S. job market to stay competitive with the rest of the world.
Employment- Hiring teachers will become even harder for school leaders in the future since Schools of Education are not training the type of teachers schools need for diverse learning systems, technology, and diverse study body. Districts must develop year-long mentorship programs with retired or close-to-retiring teachers mentoring new teachers, who may be career changers and who, more than likely, received most of their teaching degree online. Again as districts hire teachers, multilingual teachers will be at a premium, particularly those with with a passing knowledge of language and culture of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) because that is where many of your student will be hailing from, and competing and working along side in the future. Finding qualified principals, administrative staff and superintendents will continue to be difficult. Districts with shrinking enrollments will need to consider co-administrators, increased cooperative purchasing and training, and shared contractual obligations.
By closely examining the birth rates, the documented and undocumented immigration rates, and other transient tendencies of your community, school leaders can project who will be knocking at your door in five years and what services they will need to develop into civic minded young adults at age eighteen.
School and Community Leaders: A version of this paper can be personalized for your district. In person or virtual presentations can also be arranged. Contact Arfstrom Consulting for pricing and availability.
Media and publisher requests encouraged for K-12 demographic and forecasting topics.
Sources:
Births: Preliminary Data for 2013. National Vital Statistics Reports. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_02.pdf
First Births to Older Women Continue to Rise: 2014, NCHS Data Brief. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db152.pdf
Intercountry Adoption, 2013. U.S. Department of State. http://adoption.state.gov/about_us/statistics.php
Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2011, Department of Homeland Security. https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2011/ois_yb_2011.pdf
U.S. Lawful Permanent Residents: 2013. Annual Flow Report. Department of Homeland Security http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_lpr_fr_2013.pdf
Public Education Finance: 2012. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/12f33pub.pdf
School Enrollment in the United States: 2011, Population Characteristics. U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/p20-571.pdf
