Preschools Hit Record Levels as Births Rise

Enrollment in kindergarten and nursery schools is at record levels as births edge upward, a trend that Census Bureau officials say will soon reverse the long-term decline in elementary school enrollment.

“In 1985 there were more children attending pre-primary school than ever before,” including 2.5 million children in nursery school and 3.8 million in kindergarten, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

“Parents are enrolling their children at earlier ages for the educational benefits,” said Census Bureau statistician Rosalind Bruno, author of the study.

Reverses Trend

“The increase in kindergarten and nursery school enrollment in the 1980s because of increased population indicates an imminent reversal of the long-term trend of decline in elementary school enrollment,” she wrote in the bureau’s annual report on school enrollment.

Enrollment in preschools has grown significantly since 1965, even in the face of the so-called baby bust, when birth rates declined sharply.

The low number of births in the 1960s and 1970s was balanced by a rapidly increasing share of children who were sent to nursery school and kindergarten.

Echo of Baby Boom

And since 1980, an increase in the number of births has added to that trend, helping boost enrollment to the current record levels.

The increase in births in recent years is not another baby boom, statisticians stressed, since the birth rate has not increased. Instead, it is what they call an echo of the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s, the result of all those children now moving into their own prime childbearing years.