White student enrollment at CPS increased from 2010 to 2025
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.


While Chicago Public Schools enrollment plummeted between 2010 and 2025, its population of white students rose significantly, per a new Axios analysis.
The big picture: The enrollment shift bucks previous trends of white flight from urban school districts and reflects broader demographic changes reshaping the city.
- Experts say the data highlights a growing preference among some white-collar workers to raise families in urban centers rather than leaving for the suburbs.
By the numbers: The district lost 86,457 students from 2010 to 2025 but gained 2,630 white pupils.
- Latino and Asian student enrollment remained relatively steady at 44–46% and 3–5%, respectively, according to CPS data.
- But Black enrollment fell sharply — from 43% to 34% — while white enrollment rose from 9% to 12% of the overall student body.


What they're saying: Rob Paral, a demographer at the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois Chicago, tells Axios it's pretty clear that "there's a class of educated people that have a strong city preference."
- "They're voting with their feet, and they're investing in the neighborhoods that they're in. They're spending their money to live in the city."
Zoom out: A recent Economist analysis found similar patterns in Brooklyn and San Francisco, where U.S. Census data shows double-digit declines in residents under 18 but a rise in white youth in certain areas.
- An analyst told the magazine the choice to raise kids in expensive parts of cities was "a financial flex."
Zoom in: CPS saw a 7% rise in white enrollment at a time when the overall population of people 18 and under in Chicago fell by 19%, according to U.S. Census figures.
Between the lines: CPS' growing flock of selective-enrollment schools may have influenced some families to stay.
- A 2024 Axios analysis of CPS racial and economic data showed that affluent white students were overrepresented in the district's top five selective-enrollment schools.
Reality check: While the percentage of white students is rising in CPS, it doesn't begin to reflect the overall population of the city, which today hovers at about 32% white, 30% Latino and 28% Black. In CPS, those figures are:
- White: 12%
- Black: 34%
- Latino: 46%
What we're watching: How these enrollment shifts affect CPS' 2027 budgeting process, which launched this week with a warning from the district that it's facing a $732 million deficit.
