For the first time in 50 years, DC's population is on the rise, adding over 74,000 residents from 2000 to 2013. And new families in the District are changing the city's schools, driving the first increase in public school enrollment since the 1960s.

Charters, a new kind of public school authorized in DC by Congress, have grown tremendously over the past 18 years. Enrollment in traditional public schools is starting to grow slowly as well, at least in the early grades.

DC's aggressive expansion of prekindergarten and preschool slots has contributed to this turnaround, drawing families into public schools earlier. And with the District's school choice program, students can apply for a seat in any public school – not just the one in their neighborhood – giving parents even more options.

What have these changes meant for families as they decide where to live and send their kids to school? In this chapter, we explore DC's changing public school enrollment trends since 2000, breaking the data down by grade, race, school, and ward.

Rising demand among higher-educated families

So why has enrollment recently gone up? In part, it's because the number of school-age children in DC has increased since 2010, although the story is different in each ward. More school-age children have moved into Ward 3, while many have moved out of Ward 7 and Ward 8, changing the demand for schools in those three areas.

Much of the growth in public school enrollment is also due to a greater number of births in the city, particularly in the Brightwood, Takoma, and NoMa areas.

The map to the right shows the change in births by the mother's education level. In the past, higher-educated families tended to move out of the city as they started families or when their children reached school age. While most births in DC still are to women without college degrees (4,800 in 2003 and 5,800 in 2011), the number of births to college-educated women shot up from 2,400 to 3,200 during that period. Higher-educated parents tend to be more demanding of their children's schools, adding more pressure on the city to improve its schools.

Public school enrollment on the rise in early grades

Washington, DC, is a leader in offering school choice through publicly funded charter schools, open enrollment to out-of-boundary schools, and a limited number of private-school vouchers. The charter sector, which has greater independence and flexibility than traditional public schools, started with 2 DC schools in 1997; by 2012, it had expanded to 60 schools on 106 campuses in every ward except Ward 3.

Supporters of greater school choice say it gives families better access to high-quality education, while critics argue it undermines low-performing schools who lose their best students and – because funding is tied to enrollment – lose much-needed resources.

From 2001 to 2013, enrollment in charters took off, jumping from 10,679 to 36,565 students. Out of 82,958 public school students in 2013, 44 percent were in charter schools. Private school enrollment, meanwhile, has declined in DC over the past decade.

Will it last?

For years, the steady drop in DC Public Schools (DCPS) enrollment offset charter school gains, but over the past few years, more young kids have begun attending DCPS schools, pushing total public school enrollment up. The big question is: will those new families stick around through middle school?

Past trends show that many parents start pulling their kids out of DCPS schools between fifth and sixth grade in search of middle schools with better reputations. DCPS has committed to improving its long-struggling middle schools in 2015. But we don't yet know whether that will be enough to keep families in the city and in DCPS schools.

The graph on the right shows grade 2 as an example. Click through for grades K through 4.

Racial diversity of students growing in early grades

While the racial composition of the city has changed dramatically over the past decade, the racial composition of public schools has been slower to shift. In a city where 2 out of 3 school-age children are black, about 8 in 10 charter students and about 7 in 10 DCPS students are black. Compared with charters, DCPS has about three times the share of white students and about twice the share of Asian students.

Looking back at enrollment trends, black students have been shifting from traditional DCPS schools to charters. Looking at charter school kindergarten alone, black student enrollment skyrocketed from 441 students in 2002-03 to 2,109 students in 2011-12. But now, after falling steeply for years, black student enrollment in DCPS schools is starting to inch back up in kindergarten and first grade.

White student enrollment is also rising in DCPS's early grades, while Hispanic student enrollment is increasing in charters.

These data are from the National Center for Education Statistics and may not exactly match enrollment totals from the previous slide. Preschool students are not included.

Charters gain students when DCPS schools close

DCPS's recent uptick in enrollment comes after years of decline. Enrollment fell from 65,748 students in 2001-02 to 44,718 students in 2009-10, before inching up to 46,393 students in 2013-14. Families had been leaving the city for years before the recent turnaround, causing the school-age population to fall dramatically in some neighborhoods. And many families were moving their kids from DCPS schools to charters.

In response, DCPS closed several under-enrolled schools – 28 in 2008 – a move that may have caused more families to transfer to charters. Students from those shuttered schools attended charters at more than twice the rate of students from DCPS schools that didn't close. Many traditional public schools that closed in the eastern half of the city were effectively replaced by charters.

Another 15 DCPS schools closed in 2013 or are slated to close in 2014, some in the city's poorest neighborhoods, which have seen the largest decline in school-age children over the past 15 years.