Where In World Are Public School Kids?

Besides Census counts influencing fed subsidies, few things make progressives fret than public school headcounts (which also translate into $$). So there’s mucho angst in their big cities as student populations dwindle …

A study by Stanford University & the AP is especially sending alarm bells across America & for good reason: Nearly a quarter million students can’t be accounted for. As the WSJ coverage notes, “declining public-school enrollment during the pandemic has been well-chronicled. Hundreds of thousands of students learned at home or switched to private schools with more in-person learning. But especially alarming is that tens of thousands of students can’t be accounted for, at least according to the Stanford/AP researchers. Where’d they go? Disappear into the ether? The study, says the WSJ, suggests three possible explanations: “An increase in truancy, growth in home schooling that is not reported to states, and more toddlers skipping kindergarten …

But, as the WSJ also observes, “More worrisome would be if many children decided that going to school is a waste, perhaps because they weren’t learning much.” If so, “the pandemic learning loss may be even greater than has been reported & may never be made up” & it's “more evidence that school closures were an historic & tragic policy blunder.”

Davd Soul