As Texas lawmakers and education leaders have reshaped public schools in the Lone Star State, the classes taken by students have undergone big changes, too.
Enrollment in several business and science classes has grown, as Texas guides students to courses aligning with their potential future careers. Meanwhile, several elective classes have fallen in popularity, including once-popular foreign languages, while enrollment in core classes such as math and English has largely held steady.
To gauge how interest in different school subjects has changed, the Houston Landing analyzed 10 years of course enrollment data published by the Texas Education Agency. The data covers all students in grades kindergarten through 12 across the state.
There are some quirks in the data, which make it an imperfect analysis. For example, some courses were reclassified into different subjects at various points over the last decade, like reading and some math, science, technology and engineering classes. In some cases, those subjects were removed from the data below.
Still, the records provide interesting insights into how schools across Texas are changing.
On the rise: Several subjects that more directly translated in higher-paying careers, including Chinese language, finance, earth science and law, saw the sharpest percentage gains in enrollment over the last decade.
Some of the increase can be attributed to the fact that the subjects had significantly fewer students enrolled than core classes, making any enrollment changes more notable on a percentage basis.
Still, subjects like law and agriculture, food and natural resources were already popular and continued to add students.
On the decline: A few foreign languages, including German, French and Japanese, saw some of the largest drops in enrollment.
Some STEM-related subjects also experience significant losses, such as physics, computer science and information technology. However, their changes could be attributed in part to new data categorization approaches.
Some subjects have disappeared from the data in the last few years, as well, including desktop publishing and web mastering.
See more course subjects: For more specific information about how enrollment in Texas course subjects has changed over the years, search our database here.
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