Recent Poll Says Public Schools Lost 2 Million Students Since Pandemic

A recent poll was conducted by Education Next. The goal was to compare families in their present conditions, to the conditions during the pandemic, and to preceding the COVID attack. The results showed that public schools have fewer enrollments, while private and homeschooling are on the rise. In addition, according to parental responses, the return to the public school system is not likely to occur soon.

What Are The Numbers?

When asked about the type of education the dependent child at home receives, students in the public school sector decreased by 4.5% from spring 2020 (the beginning of the pandemic) to spring 2022. During the same period of time, charter, private, and homeschooling all increased from .6% to 1.7% ^[1].

The Concerns

The reasons parents give for withdrawing their children from public school are varied. As a result of decreased enrollment, school boards are facing additional pressure to pay academic teachers and make ends meet. Families have complained that schools lack family values, teach biased history, or just don’t teach their children enough every day. A week’s worth of assignments can be completed in a single day by the child at home. Could the child be capable of more? Forcing a vaccine on healthy children with life-threatening side effects, forcing online learning on them, or forcing masking on them did not sit well with parents. By placing their children in private or charter schools, or even by homeschooling them, parents took back control over their children’s education. Parents do not want their children on national news destroying buildings because they believed propaganda. They want their children to grow into responsible adults.

Results

While parents are seeing better-mannered children, on the whole, the parent feels he is in control of the child’s education, not a system. During the past two years, school districts across the country have only lost 2% of their enrollment. However, that loss accounts for about 2 million students no longer in the public sector. This covers all demographics, all races, and belief systems. Although the covid worries are becoming a thing of the past, parents are not returning their children to public schools. Parents are satisfied with the education the child is now receiving. The recent Covid measures simply brought to light what is happening in public education, and parents do not want to return there.