Broken Arrow - EdTribune OK - Oklahoma Education Data

One in Three Oklahoma Districts Just Hit Record-Low Enrollment

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Tulsa^↗ is at its lowest enrollment in at least 11 years. So is Oklahoma City^↗. So are Moore^↗, Union^↗, and Enid^↗. In total, 187 of Oklahoma's 541 public school districts recorded their lowest enrollment in at least 11 years of available data in 2025-26, more than one in three. Tulsa, OKC, Moore, and Union are on the list alongside hundreds of smaller districts. The decline spans every size class.

The 187 districts at all-time lows collectively enroll 214,793 students, 31.3% of the state's public school population. Only 68 districts, 12.6%, are at all-time highs. The ratio is nearly three to one, and it is the widest gap in the dataset outside the COVID year of 2020-21.

The 10,640-student cliff

Oklahoma lost 10,640 students between 2024-25 and 2025-26, a 1.5% drop that exceeds even the pandemic-year loss of 9,537 students in 2020-21. The state peaked at 703,650 students in 2019-20, briefly recovered to 701,258 by 2022-23, and has now fallen to 686,718, a new floor.

The pattern since the peak is unmistakable: three years of modest recovery followed by three years of accelerating decline. The losses went from 2,156 in 2023-24 to 1,744 in 2024-25 to 10,640 this year. That final drop is not a gradual erosion. It is the largest single-year loss in the 11-year dataset.

The big districts are not immune

The conventional wisdom about enrollment decline is that it is a rural problem. Oklahoma's data contradicts that. Four of the state's 10 largest traditional districts are at record lows: Tulsa (32,450 students), Oklahoma City (31,104), Moore (22,715), and Union (14,440). A fifth top-10 district, Putnam City^↗ (18,122), sits just 1.6% above its own floor.

The losses at the top are severe. Oklahoma City has lost 14,653 students since its 2016-17 peak of 45,757, a 32.0% decline. The district once enrolled 14,000 more students than Tulsa. By 2021-22, Tulsa had passed it, and the gap has held since. Tulsa has shed 8,417 students from its own 2015-16 peak of 40,867, a 20.6% decline.

Midwest City-Del City^↗ lost 2,541 students since 2019-20, a 17.9% drop. Muskogee^↗ is down 722 students (13.5%) over the same period. Ponca City^↗ fell 9.7%. Among the top 20 districts, only Norman^↗, Bixby^↗, Deer Creek^↗, and Mustang^↗ gained students since the pre-COVID peak, and all four are suburban systems on the edges of the Oklahoma City or Tulsa metros.

Decline touches every size class

The all-time-low pattern is not concentrated in any single tier. Among the state's 13 districts enrolling 10,000 or more students, four (30.8%) are at record lows. Among the 277 districts in the 100-to-499 range, 103 (37.2%) are at their floor. Even the smallest districts, those under 100 students, have an ATL rate of 41.7%.

The only size class with a relatively low ATL rate is the 5,000-to-9,999 bracket, where just one of nine districts (Enid) is at its lowest point. The mid-sized and large brackets track closely, between 28% and 42%, suggesting a statewide structural force rather than a phenomenon confined to any one type of community.

Birth rates, school choice, and the pipeline

The most likely driver of this breadth of decline is demographic. Oklahoma's kindergarten enrollment has fallen from 53,453 in 2015-16 to 45,680 in 2025-26, a 14.5% drop. Fewer children are entering the system each year, and the outgoing 12th-grade cohorts are larger than the incoming ones.

"Observers say falling birth rates are the main culprit." — Oklahoma Watch, January 2026

School choice adds a second pressure. The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit, launched in 2024, approved 39,373 students for $248.4 million in credits for the 2025-26 school year, nearly exhausting its $250 million annual cap. Of those, 3,724 were prior public school students who transferred to private schools. The program also funds a separate homeschool credit that served 2,692 returns in tax year 2024. The direct public-to-private flow of 3,724 students is a fraction of the 10,640-student statewide loss, but it compounds a demographic decline that was already underway.

Virtual charter schools absorb a larger share. Oklahoma's virtual and charter sector enrolled 57,136 students in 2025-26 across 28 entities, 8.3% of statewide enrollment. Epic Charter Schools^↗ alone enrolls 29,201 students and is at an all-time high, making it the state's third-largest district by enrollment. Epic faces ongoing legal and financial scrutiny: its co-founders face racketeering and embezzlement charges, and a forensic investigation found that financial mismanagement led to roughly 500 employee terminations between October 2024 and July 2025.

125 districts in multi-year freefall

The record-low count captures a snapshot. The streak data captures a trajectory. Of Oklahoma's 541 districts, 122 (22.6%) have declined for three or more consecutive years through 2025-26. Thirteen have declined for five or more years. Anadarko^↗ and Locust Grove^↗ have each declined for 10 consecutive years, the longest streaks in the dataset.

The median district has lost 11.2% of its enrollment since 2015-16. Of the 509 districts with data in both the first and last years, 372 (73.1%) have fewer students now than they did 11 years ago. Only 135 have grown.

COVID recovery has been limited. Of 516 districts present in both 2019-20 and 2025-26, just 147 (28.5%) have returned to their pre-pandemic enrollment. The other 369 have not. Many of those 369 are now at all-time lows.

The rural edge

Oklahoma has more than 500 districts for roughly 687,000 students, a ratio that makes consolidation a recurring policy debate. More than half of the state's districts enroll fewer than 500 students.

"I see what's coming. I can see it down the road ... we're going to start losing programs." — David Morris, Superintendent of Paoli^↗ Public Schools, on the possibility of annexation. KGOU, May 2025

For districts with 180 students or fewer, like Paoli, enrollment decline is existential. With single-digit class sizes in some grades, programs shrink, extracurriculars disappear, and parents begin looking elsewhere. That departure accelerates the decline. The state maintains a School Consolidation Assistance Fund, backed by the Oklahoma Education Lottery Trust Fund, to help districts that voluntarily annex. But annexation requires affirmative votes from both communities, and it rarely comes without grief.

"It was a gut punch. Oh, my god, my school's closing. That was really hard." — Kevin Flowers, McLish Public Schools alumnus, on his district's annexation to Stonewall 20 years ago. KGOU, May 2025

Where the growth is

Not every district is shrinking. The 68 districts at all-time highs are disproportionately suburban and charter. Epic Charter Schools (29,201) leads, followed by Norman (16,630), Bixby (8,532), Deer Creek (8,165), and Piedmont^↗ (5,497). Deer Creek has grown 18.8% since 2019-20; Bixby has grown 26.9%. Both are outer-ring suburbs that have absorbed families leaving Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

The pattern is familiar from other states: urban cores losing enrollment to an expanding suburban ring, while virtual charters capture families statewide. Edmond^↗ (24,993) and Broken Arrow^↗ (19,765) are the fourth- and sixth-largest districts and have held relatively stable, losing 2.4% and declining modestly, neither at record lows nor highs.

What 187 record lows mean for school finance

Oklahoma ranks 49th nationally in per-pupil funding according to the National Education Association. Because per-pupil funding follows students, every lost student reduces a district's state aid allocation. The state education budget was reduced by $108 million (3%) for fiscal year 2025, even as districts faced the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds.

For the 187 districts at record lows, the math is punishing. Fixed costs, building maintenance, transportation routes, administrative overhead, do not scale down proportionally when enrollment drops 10% or 15%. A district like Ponca City, down 458 students from its 2019-20 count, still runs the same bus routes and heats the same buildings.

Kindergarten enrollment has declined for four consecutive years and is now 14.5% below its 2015-16 level. Those smaller classes will move through the system, reaching each grade level and pushing its enrollment lower. When they do, a new set of districts will join the 187. The October count that matters most is not the one that just happened. It is the one in 2030, when the children born during the pandemic's fertility trough enter fifth grade and the last of the large cohorts graduates out.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Bixby Grew 41% While Tulsa Lost a Fifth of Its Students

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Bixby^↗ added 2,486 students over the last decade. Tulsa^↗ Public Schools, 15 miles north, lost 8,417 in the same period. The two districts share a metro area, a labor market, and an interstate corridor. Their enrollment lines are going in opposite directions.

Since 2015-16, Tulsa has lost 20.6% of its enrollment, falling from 40,867 to 32,450 students. That decline was not absorbed by the state at large. It migrated south and east, into the ring of newer, wealthier suburbs that surrounds the city. Bixby grew 41.1%. Collinsville^↗ grew 19.5%. Coweta^↗ grew 13.0%. The students moved south and east.

Two rings, two realities

The Tulsa metro splits cleanly into an inner ring of declining districts and an outer ring of growing ones.

The inner ring, which includes Tulsa, Union^↗, Sand Springs^↗, Catoosa^↗, Sapulpa^↗, and several smaller districts, enrolled 78,219 students in 2015-16. By 2025-26, that number had fallen to 66,449, a loss of 11,770 students, or 15.0%.

The outer ring, Broken Arrow^↗, Jenks^↗, Bixby, Owasso^↗, Collinsville, Coweta, and Glenpool^↗, went the other direction: from 54,947 to 60,073, a gain of 5,126 students, or 9.3%.

The metro as a whole still shrank. The outer ring's gains offset only 43% of the inner ring's losses. The remaining 6,644 students left the Tulsa metro entirely, moving to virtual schools, private schools, homeschool, or out of state.

The COVID crater Tulsa never climbed out of

Tulsa was already losing students before 2020. The district shed about 500 per year from 2016-17 through 2019-20, a manageable if persistent bleed. Then the pandemic hit.

In the two school years spanning COVID, 2020-21 and 2021-22, Tulsa lost 5,298 students, 63% of its entire decade-long decline compressed into two years. The brief recovery in 2022-23, when 660 students returned, proved to be an anomaly. Enrollment fell again in 2023-24 and 2024-25 before dropping 1,167 in 2025-26, the largest single-year loss since the pandemic.

The suburbs, by contrast, bounced back quickly. Broken Arrow posted its highest enrollment ever in 2022-23 at 20,115, surpassing its pre-COVID peak within two years. Bixby added 728 students in 2021-22 alone, its largest single-year gain on record. The pandemic did not just shrink Tulsa. It accelerated a suburbanization pattern that was already underway.

Where the pipeline is breaking

Tulsa's losses are not distributed evenly across grades. The youngest grades have been hollowed out. Kindergarten enrollment fell 29.2%, from 3,566 to 2,523. First grade fell 30.0%. Third grade and sixth grade both fell 30.8%.

The only grades that grew were 11th (+12.4%) and 12th (+29.8%), a pattern consistent with extended graduation timelines rather than new enrollment. When upper grades grow while lower grades collapse, a district is watching its future student body shrink in real time.

Bixby's grade distribution tells the opposite story. Every single grade grew, from PK (+41.5%) through 12th (+43.5%), with the largest gains in grades 6, 7, 8, and 11, where enrollment increased by more than 50%. Bixby is not just receiving Tulsa's spillover. It is building a complete K-12 pipeline of its own.

Even the traditional suburbs are slipping

Union, long the second-largest district in the Tulsa metro, lost 1,566 students (-9.8%) over the same period. Sand Springs lost 314 (-6.0%). Catoosa lost 377 (-17.9%). The donut's hole is wider than Tulsa alone.

Owasso, one of the largest outer-ring districts at 9,728 students, gained just 17 over the full decade, effectively flat. Broken Arrow peaked in 2022-23 and has since lost 350 students across three years. Jenks has declined in three consecutive years.

The outer ring's growth is increasingly concentrated in Bixby, Collinsville, and Coweta, smaller districts south and east of Tulsa where new housing development has been extensive. Bixby's rapid residential growth is driven by what the city describes as extensive new housing development.

A familiar pattern, with a twist

The Tulsa donut mirrors what is happening 100 miles southwest. Oklahoma City^↗ has lost 14,473 students (-31.8%) since 2015-16, an even steeper decline than Tulsa's. The OKC metro's outer ring tells the same story: Deer Creek grew 45.1%, Piedmont grew 50.6%, Mustang grew 24.4%.

Tulsa overtook OKC as the state's largest district in 2021-22, but only because OKC was falling faster. By 2025-26, the gap between them had widened to 1,346 students (32,450 vs. 31,104), with both districts on parallel downward paths.

Multiple forces are pulling students from urban cores simultaneously. The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit, which offers refundable credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child for private school tuition, approved 37,428 children statewide for the 2025-26 school year, with 3,278 confirmed to have switched from public to private schools. Union Superintendent John Federline has been direct about the impact:

"This ill-advised system has little or no accountability and has siphoned off both students and funding from public schools." — Tulsa World, Jan. 2026

School choice, however, is layered on top of a longer-running suburban migration pattern. Higher interest rates have slowed housing turnover in established neighborhoods while new construction continues in outer suburbs. Federline noted a "relatively cool housing market in the Union district with higher interest rates keeping people in their homes, and there is a declining birth rate in Oklahoma and across the nation."

Immigration enforcement is a third variable. Immigration attorney Lorena Rivas told the Tulsa World about a "drastic increase of people being deported," noting many are parents whose children leave the school system when families are displaced. The enrollment data cannot distinguish between families who moved to Bixby and families who left Oklahoma entirely.

Buildings for sale

The physical consequences of the donut are visible in Tulsa's real estate listings. The district is selling surplus properties, including former elementary schools that closed during 2020 budget cuts. Park Elementary went to Under the Canopy charter school for $350,800. Jones Elementary went to Tulsa Honor Academy for $1 million.

TPS Chief of Strategy Sean Berkstresser explained the rationale: "In the long term, we're worried about the building losing value and the potential for it to create property blight in the neighborhood." Six more properties are currently accepting sealed bids.

The layoffs followed in February 2026: 50 administrative positions cut, with district leaders calling it "the first round" of reductions to prevent a budget cliff driven by falling enrollment and expiring pandemic-era federal funding.

Oklahoma ranks 47th nationally in per-pupil spending, according to the Oklahoma Education Association. When per-student funding is already thin, losing 8,417 students does not just close buildings. It eliminates programs, consolidates routes, and increases class sizes in the buildings that remain open.

What to watch next

Tulsa's share of statewide enrollment has fallen from 5.9% in 2015-16 to 4.7% in 2025-26, a 1.2 percentage point decline that translates to an outsized loss of political and fiscal weight. The kindergarten numbers suggest the trajectory is not finished: with 2,523 kindergarteners in 2025-26 compared to 3,566 a decade ago, the classes entering the pipeline are 29% smaller than the classes exiting it.

Bixby, meanwhile, faces the opposite problem. Growth at 41% over a decade strains capacity. Whether the district can build schools fast enough to absorb the families arriving in its new subdivisions will determine whether the donut's outer ring remains a destination or becomes the next place parents drive past on their way to somewhere newer.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Oklahoma's Virtual Schools Now Enroll More Students Than Any District Except Two

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

If Oklahoma's seven virtual charter schools were a single district, it would be the state's third-largest. At 37,249 students in 2025-26, the virtual sector enrolls more students than Edmond^↗ (24,993), Moore^↗ (22,715), Broken Arrow^↗ (19,765), or any of the state's other 530-plus traditional districts. Only Tulsa^↗ (32,450) and Oklahoma City^↗ (31,104) are larger, and neither by much.

A decade ago the sector barely existed. Four virtual schools served 9,901 students in 2015-16, just 1.4% of the state. By 2025-26 that figure had nearly quadrupled, surviving a pandemic-driven spike that briefly pushed virtual enrollment past 67,000 and a criminal scandal that sent the sector's dominant operator into freefall.

A sector shaped by one school's rise and fall

The story of virtual education in Oklahoma is, in large part, the story of Epic Charter Schools^↗. In 2015-16, Epic enrolled 6,037 students across a single entity. By 2020-21, it had exploded to 59,445 across two campuses, accounting for 88.7% of all virtual enrollment and 8.6% of the entire state.

The collapse was nearly as swift. Epic's co-founders, Ben Harris and David Chaney, face multiple felony charges, including racketeering, embezzlement, and obtaining money by false pretenses, following a multi-year investigation by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. The preliminary hearing resumed in February 2026 after a nearly two-year delay. In June 2025, Epic cut 357 jobs including 83 teachers and 274 administrative staff, phasing out its learning center model entirely.

Epic's enrollment cratered from 59,445 in 2020-21 to 27,054 in 2023-24 before partially rebounding to 29,201 in 2025-26. It remains the state's third-largest enrollment entity by a wide margin. But its share of the virtual sector has fallen from 88.7% at the 2021 peak to 78.4%.

The rest of the sector is quietly doubling

While Epic dominated headlines, the six other virtual schools collectively grew from 3,864 students in 2015-16 to 8,048 in 2025-26, a 108.3% increase over 10 years. Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy^↗ (3,966 students), Oklahoma Connections Academy^↗ (1,508), and Insight School of Oklahoma^↗ (1,455) anchor the non-Epic tier. Three smaller operators, eSCHOOL Virtual Charter Academy (481), Dove Virtual Academy (338), and Virtual Preparatory Charter Academy of Oklahoma (300), round out the sector.

The non-Epic tier has grown in six of the last seven years, including through Epic's post-scandal contraction. That steady growth suggests the demand for virtual schooling extends well beyond one operator's marketing machine.

Nearly 1 in 10 high schoolers

The grade-level distribution reveals where virtual schools have their deepest foothold. In grades 9 through 11, virtual schools account for 9.1% to 9.5% of all students. In elementary grades, that figure drops to 2.7% to 3.7%.

The high school skew has practical consequences. In 11th grade, virtual schools claim 4,931 of 52,032 students statewide. That is roughly one out of every 11 juniors in Oklahoma taking their courses through a screen rather than in a building. By contrast, fewer than one in 30 first-graders are enrolled virtually.

The pattern likely reflects a mix of factors: older students who may be working, parenting, or recovering credits; families who tried and left traditional high schools; and the flexibility that virtual models offer students who do not fit conventional schedules. The data cannot distinguish between students choosing virtual schools proactively and those pushed out of brick-and-mortar options.

What the research shows so far

Academic outcomes for virtual charter students in Oklahoma are, on average, substantially worse than for their peers in traditional schools. A peer-reviewed study published in the Oklahoma Education Journal tracked over 800,000 test scores and found that students attending virtual charters scored 0.21 standard deviations lower in English language arts and 0.30 standard deviations lower in math, deficits the authors estimated at roughly two-thirds of a year's learning.

"Average annual achievement growth is 0.31 standard deviations in ELA and 0.42 standard deviations in math for students in Grades 3 to 8." -- Hamlin, Adams, & Adigun, Oklahoma Education Journal (2023)

The researchers cautioned that "we cannot say that fully virtual schooling causes learning loss," since the students who enroll virtually may differ from those who stay in traditional schools in ways the data cannot capture. A student dealing with chronic illness, bullying, or housing instability may choose virtual school precisely because their circumstances are already affecting their learning. The performance gap may partly reflect who enrolls, not just how the school performs.

The funding equation

Oklahoma's school funding formula sends per-pupil dollars wherever students enroll. When 37,249 students attend virtual schools, 37,249 per-pupil allocations follow them out of traditional district budgets. The state ranks 49th in per-pupil spending according to the National Education Association, which means the margin between a school staying open and closing is thinner than in most states.

Traditional districts have shed 33,300 students since 2015-16, a 4.9% decline. But the decline has not been steady. In 2021-22 and 2022-23, traditional districts clawed back 27,216 and 12,321 students respectively as families returned from the pandemic's virtual experiment. In 2025-26, traditional districts lost 12,058 students, the steepest single-year drop since the pandemic itself.

The virtual sector is not the only pressure on traditional enrollment. The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit, enacted in 2023, has approved 37,428 children for private school tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per student. Of those, 3,278 switched from public to private schools for the first time in 2025-26. Combined with the 37,249 students in virtual charters, roughly 74,000 Oklahoma students now participate in alternatives to traditional public schools through just these two programs.

The Statewide Charter School Board question

The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board, which assumed sole authority over virtual charter sponsorship on July 1, 2024, faces a straightforward challenge: how to oversee a sector that enrolls more students than all but two districts while the state's largest virtual operator is simultaneously fighting felony charges and restructuring its operations.

Robert Franklin, the board's chairman, has publicly acknowledged that the state could be approaching a saturation point for virtual schools. The Oklahoma Public Charter School Association disagrees. The data so far suggests the sector is still growing, adding 1,418 students in 2025-26 after a 2,035-student gain the year before.

37,249 families chose virtual. The research says those students are learning less. Oklahoma built one of the country's largest virtual sectors without building a system to check whether it works.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Fewer Kindergartners Than Seniors for the First Time

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT

In 2016, Oklahoma's public schools enrolled 127 kindergartners for every 100 seniors. A decade later, that ratio has collapsed to 93. For the first time in the state's available enrollment history, fewer five-year-olds are starting school than 18-year-olds are finishing it.

The crossover happened in 2024-25, when kindergarten enrollment fell to 47,300 while 12th grade climbed to 49,281. This year the gap widened: 45,680 kindergartners against 49,213 seniors, a deficit of 3,533 students. The inversion is not a one-year anomaly. It is the endpoint of two converging trends that have been running for a decade, and it locks in continued enrollment losses through at least the early 2030s.

A ratio in freefall

The kindergarten-to-senior ratio is a simple measure of a school system's demographic momentum. Above 100, more students are entering than leaving. Below 100, the system is shrinking from the bottom up.

Oklahoma's ratio held near 120 from 2017 through 2020, then dropped sharply. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the decline: kindergarten fell by 2,381 students in a single year (2020 to 2021), while 12th grade kept climbing. By 2024, the ratio had narrowed to 103.5. By 2025, it crossed the parity line at 96.0. This year it sits at 92.8.

The decline on the kindergarten side is steep and sustained: from 53,453 in 2016 to 45,680 in 2026, a loss of 7,773 students, or 14.5%. The 12th-grade side moved in the opposite direction, climbing from 42,061 to 49,213, a gain of 7,152 students, or 17.0%. The combined swing of nearly 15,000 students between the two grades produced a gap that did not exist a decade ago.

The bottom falls out, grade by grade

The inversion at kindergarten and 12th grade is the most visible expression of a structural shift that runs through the entire grade distribution. Every grade from pre-K through 3rd lost students between 2016 and 2026. Every grade from 4th through 12th gained.

The losses are concentrated at the youngest levels. First grade lost 8,164 students (14.6%), the largest absolute decline of any grade. Kindergarten lost 7,773 (14.5%). Pre-K lost 6,614 (15.9%). The gains are concentrated at the top: 12th grade added 7,152 students (17.0%), 11th grade added 6,930 (15.4%), and 10th grade added 3,697 (7.6%).

Fourth grade is the approximate pivot point, gaining just 274 students over the decade. The result is a system that is tilting: elementary enrollment (K-5) has fallen from 48.5% of K-12 students in 2016 to 44.8% in 2026, a loss of 23,775 students. Secondary enrollment (6-12) grew by 23,396 over the same period. For every three students Oklahoma's elementary schools lost, its secondary schools gained three.

What is shrinking the front end

The most likely driver of falling kindergarten enrollment is fewer births. Oklahoma's fertility rate dropped 12.2% between 2011 and 2023, from 67.3 to 59.1 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, according to March of Dimes PeriStats data. The national total fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.6 children per woman in 2024, well below the 2.1 replacement level. Children born in 2020 and 2021, at the trough of pandemic-era fertility, are entering kindergarten now.

School choice is a contributing but secondary factor. Oklahoma's Parental Choice Tax Credit program approved 37,428 students for 2025-26, with 3,278 switching from public to private school for the first time. The tax credit provides up to $7,500 per child. Whether the program is pulling disproportionately from kindergarten is unknown; the program does not publish a grade-level breakdown.

"Public school enrollment fell across the U.S. and is largely attributed to plummeting birth rates and shifting attitudes toward school post-pandemic." -- Oklahoma Watch, Jan. 2026

Homeschooling adds another unknown. Oklahoma does not require homeschool families to register, so no reliable count exists. One analysis estimated that nearly one in four Oklahoma school-age children may now be educated outside their zoned public school, whether through homeschooling, virtual charters, open transfers, or private school.

What is inflating the back end

The 12th-grade surge is real, but part of it reflects structural features of how Oklahoma counts high school students. The 8th-to-9th grade transition has consistently run between 104% and 106% every year since 2016, meaning 9th grade is always larger than the 8th-grade class that preceded it. Some of this reflects students re-entering from private school, homeschool, or virtual programs at the high school level.

The 11th-to-12th transition runs at 94-96%, meaning about 5% of 11th graders do not appear as 12th graders the following year. But the 12th-grade total has still grown because the cohorts feeding into it were larger than the cohorts that came before. The 12th-grade class of 2026 (49,213) traces back to the 9th-grade class of 2023 (56,166 students), with normal attrition along the way.

Oklahoma's graduation indicator includes both four-year and fifth-year graduates, suggesting some retained students inflate 12th-grade counts in a given year. The state's four-year graduation rate of 81% is among the lowest nationally, which is consistent with some students cycling through 12th grade more than once.

The pipeline deficit

The pipeline deficit matters more than the K-versus-G12 headline: the gap between students entering the system and students leaving it.

In 2016, Oklahoma enrolled 95,096 students in pre-K and kindergarten combined, against 87,163 in 11th and 12th grade. The entry surplus was 7,933 students. By 2021, the lines crossed: 87,495 entering versus 93,524 exiting, a deficit of 6,029. This year, the deficit hit 20,536. The system is losing more than 20,000 students per year through graduation and attrition than it is gaining through new enrollment.

This deficit has direct consequences for statewide totals. Oklahoma enrolled 686,718 students in 2025-26, its lowest figure in at least 11 years and down 16,932 from the 2020 peak of 703,650. The pipeline math makes continued decline nearly certain: the current K-12 enrollment of 649,046 (excluding pre-K) contains 290,922 students in grades K-5 and 358,124 in grades 6-12. As smaller elementary cohorts replace larger graduating classes, the total will keep falling even if kindergarten enrollment stabilizes at current levels.

Nearly two-thirds of districts are inverted

The statewide inversion is not driven by a handful of large districts. In 2016, 151 of 422 districts with both K and 12th-grade enrollment (35.8%) had fewer kindergartners than seniors. By 2026, that figure had climbed to 262 of 425 districts, or 61.6%.

Among the 10 largest districts, only three enrolled more kindergartners than seniors in 2026: Mustang^↗ (ratio of 101.4), Oklahoma City^↗ (105.7), and Tulsa^↗ (119.8). The suburban ring tells a different story. Union^↗ enrolled 72 kindergartners for every 100 seniors. Moore^↗ enrolled 73. Edmond^↗ enrolled 80. Broken Arrow^↗ enrolled 85. These are districts whose elementary schools are shrinking while their high schools remain full.

The most extreme case among large districts is Epic Charter School^↗, Oklahoma's largest virtual operator, where kindergarten enrollment (935) is less than a third of its 12th-grade count (3,186), a ratio of 29.3. Virtual schools skew heavily toward older students, and Epic's grade distribution amplifies the statewide pattern.

Oklahoma City's ratio fell from 188.4 in 2016 to 105.7 in 2026. The district enrolled 4,129 kindergartners a decade ago. This year: 2,231. Tulsa's ratio dropped from 219.9 to 119.8, with kindergarten falling from 3,566 to 2,523.

Pre-K signals more to come

Pre-K enrollment, which feeds kindergarten the following year, has fallen from 41,643 in 2016 to 35,029 in 2026, a decline of 15.9%. The year-over-year drop in 2026 was 1,679 students, the third-largest single-year loss in the series after the pandemic-era drops in 2021 (-2,993) and 2020 (-1,738). If the historical relationship between pre-K and kindergarten holds, next year's kindergarten class will be smaller still.

Enrollment will keep falling -- the pipeline math guarantees it. A building that served 500 kindergartners a decade ago and serves 420 today still needs a roof, a principal, and heat. Oklahoma's per-pupil funding formula sends dollars where students sit. When fewer five-year-olds show up each September, the money leaves too, even if the building stays.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.