New from EdNC
The Editor’s Notes
Thank you to our colleagues at UNC for the look backwards and forwards on market share. Note that the forecast has 100-county projections on market share, which are useful for superintendents, school boards, and county commissions in planning.
Every time we publish an article about market share we get questions because there are two ongoing challenges in looking at this issue in North Carolina.
Unlike the data for the other educational sectors, the data on homeschools is an estimate. According to the Division of Non-Public Education, “The numbers of students are estimates based on information submitted by actual open schools during each school year.”
The other challenge is what denominator to use. In the article on trends, the researchers used the sum of the students in each sector as the denominator.
For the forecast, Nathan Dollar at Carolina Demography says, “We did look at estimates of the population 5-17 (not 0-18) and compared against the estimated number of students enrolled in all sectors. As you will see in the report, in some counties, less than 100% of the estimated 5-17 year-olds were enrolled, and in others, over 100% were enrolled. It’s complicated because not all students who are counted in a county for charters, privates, and homes, necessarily reside in that county, and there is also the issue of the potential undercounts. We suspect that kids attending in counties where they don’t reside is the biggest explanatory factor here, but we of course, can’t say with certainty until we have better data on both were students reside and where they attend school.”
When EdNC conducts our own research on market share, we run into that same issue. The bottom line is we need better data moving forward.
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