from ZeroHedge:
Over a million children left public schools in 2020, a migration that came on the heels of school lockdowns and masking requirements, and was hastened by increased parental dissatisfaction with K-12 education.
Enrollment in U.S. public schools declined by 1.4 million students between fall 2019 and fall 2020, dipping to 49.4 million, a loss of nearly 3 percent, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
The decline may be closer to 2 million, according to a report by Education Next showing that traditional public school enrollment as a percentage of all school enrollment declined sharply between 2020 and 2022.
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Enrollment in traditional public schools fell from 81 to 76.5 percent of total enrollment during that period, while enrollment in public charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling grew by a combined 4.5 percent.
Those numbers indicate that nearly 2 million students left traditional public schools for other educational options over the previous three years.
In many cases, the disruption in learning due to COVID-19 policies was the catalyst many parents needed to make the jump away from public schools to charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling.
Based on recent enrollment figures and the comfort many parents express with their decision to opt out of public schools, it appears the missing millions will not return.
Dissatisfaction With Learning
Parent satisfaction with K-12 education plunged between 2019 and 2022, according to GALLUP. Prior to the onset of COVID-19, 51 percent of parents said they were either completely or somewhat satisfied with their child’s education. Three years later, that satisfaction level was 42 percent, the lowest in over 20 years.
Nearly a quarter of Americans, 23 percent, said they were completely dissatisfied with their child’s education.
Parent interviews conducted by The Epoch Times revealed that distance learning during school lockdowns provided a glimpse into the classroom that made parents question their school’s ability to educate their children.
“For a while, [our kids] were getting homework assigned to them by their teachers … but there was no teaching going on,” Matt Mohler of Tallahassee, Florida, said. He moved his children from a highly public school to a classical charter school in the fall of 2020.
“Once a week they’d all get together on a classroom call, and that was the extent of what the teachers were doing. We realized that we weren’t getting a lot of effort out of the teachers.”
“The distance learning was eye-opening,” said Maria Nicholas of Whittier, California, who began homeschooling her son in the fall of 2021. She said she would not have considered homeschooling if not for the lockdown, but seeing how her middle-school son thrived while at home rather than in the classroom was a factor in her decision.
Shireen Qudosi of Orange County, California, took her autistic son out of public school in October 2020. “There wasn’t even a functioning curriculum in place, which access into the classroom through remote learning confirmed.”
Mask and Vaccine Requirements
In January 2022, 65 percent of public schools tracked by data site Burbio had student masking requirements. Parent and student protests against mandatory masking erupted that month in New York, California, and Massachusetts.
The combination of public school mask policies and state vaccine mandates drove some parents to seek alternatives.
