White student enrollment at CPS increased from 2010 to 2025
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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.