Like most people, I welcome good news whenever and wherever I can find it. In this case, I noticed that Vietnamese enrollments in US secondary boarding and day schools experienced a slight 4.71% increase from December 2020 to March 2021, exceeding the figure from last September, which represented a 33.15% decrease since the beginning of 2020. The decrease over a two-year period from March 2019 to March 2021 was 36.19%.

In an attempt to fill in the blanks, so to speak, here are some stats in declining chronological order with the percentage changes. As you can see, there were fewer Vietnamese students attending US boarding and day schools even before COVID-19. The effects of the global pandemic are graphically illustrated by the September 2020 number.

March 2021: 2625 (+4.71%)
December 2020: 2507 (-3.61%)
September 2020: 2601 (-33.15)
January 2020: 3891 (-5.42%)
March 2019: 4114

While a one-quarter increase does not a trend portend, it’s something worth monitoring. As always, let’s hope for the best and do what we can to make it happen.

Shalom (שלום), MAA