SCHOOL QUALITY AND MASSACHUSETTS ENROLLMENT SHIFTS IN THE CONTEXT OF TAX LIMITATIONS

Like most states, Massachusetts underwent a large shift in public scho ol enrollments between the 1980s and 1990s, requiring a number of siza ble fiscal and educational adjustments by individual school districts. Between 1980 and 1989, the number of students in kindergarten through grade 12 fell 21 percent, from 1.04 million to 825,000. As children o f baby boomers reached school age, the picture changed and enrollments grew more than 90,000 over the next seven years. These aggregate tren ds gloss over even more marked shifts at the local level. This article investigates the degree to which the constraints of Proposition 2 1/2 , and other factors such as demographic and economic shifts and differ ences in school quality, affected the adjustments that both local gove rnments and households made to a demographically driven turnaround in enrollment growth. The authors report three major findings: (1) Net pu blic school enrollment changes are positively related to differences a cross communities in school quality. (2) Shifts in enrollments were mu ch more pronounced in the 1990s, when aggregate enrollments were risin g and the economy was improving. (3) Proposition 2 1/2 appears to have significantly altered the pattern of enrollment changes, with familie s with students moving to districts less constrained by this property tax limit.