Posted on 02/10/2023 4:30:36 AM PST by EBH
Over the first two school years under the COVID-19 pandemic, K–12 enrollment in public schools decreased dramatically—with losses concentrated among the youngest students—and the pandemic has had historically unprecedented effects on available learning opportunities. But we know little about where these students went and what learning environments they are experiencing. Understanding the diverse character of these effects has not been straightforward. The pandemic has complicated the comparability of many conventional education indicators and conventional data from administrators, and surveys on student experiences are often available only after long delays.
KEY FINDINGS
Over the first two school years under the pandemic, K–12 enrollment in public schools fell by more than 1.2 million students, with prominent losses among students in early elementary grades and kindergarten. In the 2021–22 school year, private school enrollment was 4 percent higher while homeschool enrollment was 30 percent higher.
The growth in private school enrollment was particularly large in kindergarten and early elementary grades. DC and the 21 states that had available data showed increased homeschool enrollment during the pandemic. The smallest increase occurred in North Carolina, where homeschool enrollment grew by 8 percent. Other states saw particularly large increases, including Florida (43 percent), New York (65 percent), and Pennsylvania (53 percent).
During the pandemic, the school-age population in the US fell by more than 250,000; the location of the school-age population shifts and the pattern of states gaining and losing children matched the changes in the total population.
More than a third of the loss in public school enrollment cannot be explained by corresponding gains in private school and homeschool enrollment and by demographic change. For example, between the 2019–20 and the 2021–22 school years, K–12 enrollment in California’s public schools fell by roughly 271,000. Though some of this loss can be attributed to the corresponding decline in the state’s school-age population and growth in private and homeschool enrollment, sources fail to explain more than half (about 150,000 students) the state’s public school enrollment losses.
IMPLICATIONS
The data reveal that two of the primary explanations for the public school pandemic exodus are an increase in homeschooling and a decrease in the school-age population. But these two trends cannot explain the entire enrollment drop. The large amount of public school enrollment loss that, in many states, cannot be explained by changes in nonpublic enrollment and demographics suggests the possibility of other developmentally relevant behaviors (e.g., kindergarten skipping, unregistered homeschooling, and truancy) that merit further research.
Overall, these data provide new insights that can guide ongoing efforts to understand the pandemic’s educational impact and to address those effects. The sharp and sustained growth in homeschooling and private school enrollment raises new questions about the quality of the learning environments children are experiencing. Additionally, evidence on the role of demographic change suggests that many school districts facing fiscal and operational challenges in the face of enrollment loss are likely to find those enrollment losses enduring.
Thousands of kids are missing from school. Where did they go?
https://apnews.com/article/covid-school-enrollment-missing-kids-homeschool-b6c9017f603c00466b9e9908c5f2183a?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_05&utm_content=eyebrows
An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for. These students didn’t move out of state, and they didn’t sign up for private school or home-school, according to publicly available data.
In short, they’re missing.
As with “ghost soldiers” in a corrupt third-world army, I wonder how many of them ever actually existed.
Parents are either pulling their children out of the GICs (government indoctrination camps) or not signing them up to go at all. Instead they are choosing for them homeschooling, parochial schools, or private ones.
They’re walking away from being Socialized. May the Walk Away Movement continue in earnest.
No sane parent would send their kids to these hellscapes
Did they account for inter-state relocation? Send the children to live with grandparents or aunt/uncle who is in a state where the schools did not close or where they could go to a low-cost private school that did not close.
For such a lengthy article, it was surprisingly limited in it’s scope.
What you just described was apparently not even considered as a likely factor in the reduced enrollment.
The article was about 3X longer than it had to be and tended to repeat its own message a couple of times.
This could be awesome — if it’s an indication that large numbers of parents no longer want the government to have anything to do with their kids.
they are not registering them for homeschooling either
Hard to believe, these goobers CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHAT IS HAPPENING.
Boy, I’m sad that I couldn’t get to Harvard so I could ponder what the problem is here.
Yes, they are saying these kids are not accounted for anywhere in system.
Depends on the where they live. Some states require parents to declare in writing that their children are being homeschooled.
Many parents had the opportunity to really see what was being passed off as education during the pandemic.
Just like the missing workers...who chose to not return to work. Many families adjusted themselves to be one income homes and dedicated to raising their kids.
Vouchers. Reward performance. Let nepotism and communism wither
If we can see that...why can’t the “EXPERTS” SEE IT.
There are none so blind as those who WILL NOT see.
Regards, EBH.
Yep, our kids technically dropped off the map 10+ years ago. We wrote the dept of EDU in FL that we were homeschooling and then moved to MO a year later and continued to homeschool and MO doesn’t require notification so as far as MO is concerned, our kids didn’t exist.
Hm?....A question I hadn’t considered. Good point!
Bump for later!!!!
Perhaps they are forming neighborhood learning pods.
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