This article, written by Erin Gretzinger, originally appeared in The Cap Times.

A University of Wisconsin–Madison class started the fall semester with a big question to tackle: Which families are opting not to enroll their children in the Madison school district, and why?

After a semester of conducting background research, analyzing data and reaching out directly to Madison families for interviews, one key finding was that nearly 1,600 middle and high school students open enrolled out of Madison schools into another public school district over the last three years — with white families being the most likely to leave.

The class, titled “Research to Enhance Equity in Education,” is part of a collaboration between the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at UW–Madison and the Madison Metropolitan School District called the Madison Education Partnership. Eric Grodsky, a professor of sociology and education policy studies who serves as co-director of the partnership, teaches the course.

“It was a terrific way to blend applied social science with some of the scientific literature in education, with some practical experiences,” Grodsky said.

Half of the class scrutinized open enrollment data to see which families are opting to leave Madison schools, finding that white students are disproportionately more likely to enroll out of the district compared to other groups.

The UW–Madison students focused on middle and high schools, meaning their sample didn’t capture the full extent of open enrollment in the district. Across all grade levels, 1,526 children transferred out of the Madison school district in the 2023-24 school year, while 471 transferred in, according to the most recent state Department of Public Instruction figures.

About 900 white students enrolled out of Madison middle and high schools over a three-year period, compared to just under 200 Black students, according to Simon Aizenstein, a senior in the class who led the data analysis. White students are about 8 percentage points more likely than Black students to open enroll out of the district.

For Aizenstein, his biggest takeaway was how “huge” a factor race is in determining which students leave the district. The students found enrollment decisions are only modestly responsive to levels of academic achievement, with higher-achieving schools being less likely to have students transfer out.

Grade level, gender, school population growth and student-teacher ratios had little or no statistically significant impact on whether students decided to leave via open enrollment.

Test scores for Wisconsin and Madison schools have long shown racial disparities in reading and math proficiency. In federal tests, the gaps between Black and white students in the state remain among the largest in the nation.

“You’re aware of these Black-white differences in Wisconsin and Madison specifically,” Aizenstein said. “But it is really just crazy every time we do see something like this.”

While half of Grodsky’s class studied enrollment transfers from Madison schools, the other half examined 4K enrollment data to better understand why some families weren’t choosing the district’s free programs. Expanding 4K programs, particularly full-day options, has been a key part of the district’s strategy for attracting families and boosting overall enrollment.

Among the more than 11,000 students reviewed by the UW–Madison class, about two-thirds attended 4K and kindergarten in the district, while about one-third attended kindergarten in Madison schools but didn’t attend 4K with the district. The class found students of color, low-income students and students with disabilities are more likely to enroll in 4K programs. About 80% who attended 4K went on to enroll in Madison schools for kindergarten.

To better understand why some parents didn’t enroll their children in 4K, the class randomly sampled and contacted 20 parents to conduct interviews, said Olivia O’Callaghan, a junior who led the outreach. Two families that didn’t choose the district’s 4K programming agreed to interviews. They cited logistical challenges due to a lack of full-day options as a key reason, which O’Callaghan said is a common barrier the class found for other families nationwide in their research.

“It’s definitely not a problem or an issue that only MMSD is faced with,” O’Callaghan said. “But it was interesting to see that reflected in our findings, as well.”

Bri Monahan, a research director for the school district’s internal assessment division, said students chose their research subjects from a list of topics the district was interested in learning more about. Enrollment patterns are top-of-mind questions not just for Madison schools, but districts across the country, Monahan said.

“What’s been the reality of the district post-Covid — which is also the reality shared by many districts like MMSD — is that we’ve seen declines in enrollment that are sort of hard to explain or fully understand,” said Monahan, who helped co-led the UW–Madison class with Grodsky. “You want to be able to devise policy solutions based on fully understanding the problem, and I think that’s part of what made them good projects.”

A lot of the students’ findings confirmed what the school district already assumed about its challenges, including that more white students open enrolled out of the district than students of color, Monahan said.

“Just looking across all of our data, I think it would be more surprising if there weren’t those differences,” Monahan said. “That’s just one of the stories of Madison — that we have various levels of access and opportunity, and that just shows up across most metrics.”

Grodsky and Monahan said the process of documenting how broader trends are manifesting in the school district is helpful to chart a path forward and disprove that the district is different from others.

“Districts tend to feel like they’re the special district. … The truth is, it’s almost always the same,” Grodsky said. “So documenting this, I think, for people in the district, is really helpful from a policy point of view.”

Grodsky plans to teach the class again and potentially expand it, with hopes of bringing in more UW–Madison researchers and securing additional resources to provide incentives for interviewees that could help boost response rates.

“Now we have these new lanes of questions to explore that this work opened up,” Monahan said. “There are teams of people working on enrollment and thinking about the implications of this and other work that the district is doing.”

At the end of the semester, the UW–Madison students presented their findings to school district leaders in the Doyle Administration Building. Superintendent Joe Gothard thanked the students for their work, emphasizing the importance of better understanding the families opting out of enrolling in Madison’s schools and 4K programs.

“This is what we do in this room right here,” Gothard told the students. “We talk about these factors all the time, so it’s really great to have some new ideas about ways that we might present and think about our own practices.”