Published January 7, 2023 at 3:20pm
Americans are pulling their kids out of public schools.
Between 2020 and 2021, almost 2 million students stop attending public schools.
Charter school enrollment rose during this time.
Almost 2 million students stopped attending public schools between 2020 and 2021, enrollment data shows.
In a recent poll from Education Next, district-operated schools lost 4 percent of their students during those two years, with those children enrolling in other types of schooling.
In the spring of 2020, 81 percent of schoolchildren in the United States were enrolled in district schools, according to parental response to the poll.
By November of that year, enrollment in district schools had plummeted to 72 percent, according to Education Next numbers.
This has caused some school districts to shut down some of their schools.
Public schools in the U.S. have lost more than a million students since the start of the pandemic, prompting some districts across the country to close buildings because they don’t have enough pupils or funding to keep them open.
The school board in Jefferson County, Colo., outside Denver, voted in November to close 16 schools. St. Paul, Minn., last summer closed five schools. The Oakland, Calif., school board last February voted to close seven schools after years of declining enrollment and financial strife.
Declining birthrates, a rise in home schooling and growing competition from private and charter schools are contributing to the decline in traditional public school enrollment, according to school officials.
Districts in cities including Denver and Indianapolis have developed plans to shut down underused schools, and superintendents say more closures are inevitable unless enrollment drops are reversed.
Anyone who can is pulling their kids from public schools.