Consider This from NPR - School's In, But The Kids Are Out: Why Enrollment Continues To Drop

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Public school enrollment dropped three percent nationwide during the 2020-2021 school year.NPR's education team continued to track enrollment this school year and found that while districts have gained students, a significant majority are still not back to where they were prior to the pandemic.A similar story has unfolded in Los Angeles, Chicago and at more public schools across the nation.NPR education reporter Cory Turner looked into why students are still not coming back to school and what schools are trying to do about it.Meanwhile, some of the students not enrolled in public school have started being homeschooled during the pandemic. WBHM education reporter Kyra Miles spoke to Black families in Alabama who are choosing that option in increasing numbers.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Tanisha Grant has a personal lesson learned about schooling in the pandemic. I'm sorry to put down this myth that in-person learning is best, but that's not true. Over the last two years, we've heard from lots of parents desperate to get their kids back into the classroom. But for Grant's 14-year-old son, remote schooling has been a silver lining in the pandemic. He's excelling, and she's worried about COVID. So when their school district said every student had to return to the classroom, she said no. The school has basically been giving my son work on Google Classrooms, but for the marking period, you know, when we had the teacher-parent conference, you know, when I talked to his

teachers, you know, a couple of them was clearly upset about the fact that my son was doing the work, but wouldn't get the credit because he wasn't coming into in-person learning. So they're penalizing us. Grant lives in Harlem, New York, and founded a group called Parents Supporting Parents back in 2000. This year, the group has been advocating for a permanent remote schooling option. A lot of our families are traumatized by the virus, by the pandemic. And, you know, their children are aware of that. And I have children that are telling their parents, I don't want to go to school because I don't want to get the virus and come home and kill you. And this was all before Omicron was even a factor. On Sunday,

New York City had more than 5,700 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Now, Grant has not officially disenrolled her son from the school system, but thousands of parents across the country have, and many of them point to some of the same frustrations as Grant. In New York City, school enrollment fell by about 38,000 students last school year, and they dropped another 13,000 this year. Similar trends are playing out in California. California's public school system is now seeing more of the damaging effects of the pandemic. New figures released today show a sharp drop in enrollment. Minnesota.

We can now confirm what many people already suspected. Public school enrollment dropped this year in Minnesota. We can now confirm what many people already suspected. Public school enrollment dropped this year in Minnesota. Illinois. Enrollment for Chicago public schools dropped for a 10th straight year. In Chicago, dropping enrollment was already a problem before COVID, according to Pedro Martinez, CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Pre-pandemic, we were already seeing enrollment decline. So what happened during COVID is we saw an increase in the number of children that didn't come.

And lower enrollment can mean less funding. Consider this. An NPR investigation shows the drop in public school enrollment during the first year of the pandemic was not temporary. Coming up, we'll hear how schools are trying to win students back and where some parents and students are turning instead. From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Monday, December 20th. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. NPR's education team spent this fall gathering school data and interviewing superintendents to figure out what's going on with enrollment.

Education reporter Corey Turner takes it from here. NPR collected data from hundreds of districts across the country. The resulting sample is not representative or comprehensive, but the numbers and interviews nevertheless show some clear patterns. The big one? That most of the districts we surveyed are still in a pandemic enrollment hole. To understand why, you need to know a few things about those missing students. Half the kids we lost were pre-K kids. Michael Hinojosa runs the schools in Dallas, Texas, and says many preschool parents there simply held their kids back last year. And that's why federal data show nationwide preschool and kindergarten enrollment dropped 13 percent between 2019 and

2020. So preparing for this fall, Hinojosa and his team spent the spring and summer advertising. They put up billboards with preschoolers dressed like a teacher, a police officer and a doctor. I mean, a pre-Kerr with a stethoscope and a doctor's jacket to say, look, these kids are going to become doctors, but if they don't come back to school, they're going to fall further behind. And this fall, Dallas did see a bump in preschool enrollment, as did many places, though they're still not where they were before COVID. The head of Chicago Public Schools, Pedro Martinez, says some kids aren't back this year because their families enrolled them elsewhere,

in charter schools or private schools, or moved out of district. Parents and caregivers wanted their kids in school full-time, he says, and they worried the public schools wouldn't be open or stay open. And so we saw a couple thousand students that transferred over to private schools in the city, assuring the family that they would be open in person no matter what. We also heard a lot about older students who didn't log on for remote learning last year, but didn't change schools either. They just disappeared. Well, district leaders told us that this summer, they went looking for those teens.

John Davis, the chief of schools in Baltimore, says they used federal relief dollars to pay school staff to call students and families and knock on doors. What you're doing is you're looking at kids with the worst attendance in your school and talking to the family like we're going to be back in person right at the end of August or September and I'm back into whatever the school is and like let's do this. And Davis says those efforts helped prevent another big drop in Baltimore, though they too are not yet back to their pre-pandemic enrollment. We heard about one more

challenge for schools trying to reconnect with older students this fall. A lot of my principals were saying, Dr. Small, we're losing kids. They're telling us I have to work and they're working during the school day. Leslie Myers Small runs the schools in Rochester, New York, and says many of these students are supporting their families. We also knew that we were fighting against survival and poverty. Several superintendents told us their teams have been asking businesses to give these teens later hours when that's not an option. School does not have to happen in the hours in which they happen right now. Eric Green is superintendent in Jackson, Mississippi,

and says for students who have to work, he's trying to make school more flexible. Late afternoon, early evening, weekends, you know, if there's a piece of this that is asynchronous, then the world is open to us. And we heard this from school leaders around the country, that the pandemic set them back and recovery will take more than a year or two, but that it has also allowed them to creatively embrace an idea that has bothered educators for years. That it's time to throw out the old one-size-fits-all model of school and to better meet students and families wherever they're at. That's NPR education reporter Corey Turner.

Homeschooling is becoming a growing preference to meet students' needs. A common narrative is that the families that typically homeschool are white and evangelical, but Black families are increasingly choosing to homeschool their children. Kyra Miles from member station WBHM reports on why some in Alabama are taking their children's education into their own hands. Once it set in for Dedeke Drew Griffin that her kids wouldn't be going back to public school in March 2020, I don't know, it was like a light bulb moment.

And ultimately what I realized is that the pandemic just gave us an opportunity to do what we needed to do anyway, which is homeschooling. Three things made Griffin decide to start. First, she wanted to protect her kids from racism and bullies. She also wanted them to understand their cultural history. And number three, it's our freedom. I want to have time to cultivate my children's African-American, their Nigerian history and culture in them first before anybody tries to tell them who they are. She says COVID might have been her catalyst for homeschooling.

But it has not been the reason that we kept going. The Census Bureau reported that in April 2020, 3% of Black households homeschooled their children. And by October that same year, it was up to 16%. Those numbers might not be completely accurate because a lot of kids were learning at home in 2020. So the census clarified its survey question partway through that period. But even so, Joyce Burgess, who founded the National Black Home Educators, says thousands of families have joined that organization since 2020. I think you're going to see more and more parents, Black parents, homeschooling their children like never before. Homeschooling in Black households can be its own unique form of activism. Cheryl Field-Smith is a professor at the University of Georgia. She studies how Black mothers use

homeschooling as a form of resistance. We are combating the leftovers from slavery. This idea of white supremacy and the inferiority of Black people lingers today. We are overcoming racism through homeschooling. I don't think white people can say that. Take school discipline. Data from the U.S. Department of Education in 2014 found that Black students were suspended at three times the rate of white students. Jennifer Duckworth co-founded the Black Homeschoolers of Birmingham so more homeschooling families of color could find and support each other. The African-American and the African culture, we are the culture that has been homeschooling our children since the beginning.

And so I feel like it's just in our DNA. For a long time, the country put up barriers that made it hard for Black people to get an education. So learning was always a community effort. Duckworth has three kids, and she's been homeschooling them for several years already. They participate in a lot of the Black homeschooling group's activities, like the debate club and field trips. The group has helped Duckworth's 10-year-old son, Alexander, make new friends. It just feels great to be around kids like me so they don't always have to be alone like the odd person out. Last month the group held its first homeschooling summit. Duckworth says in just three years the black homeschoolers of Birmingham has grown from

two families to 70. Kyra Miles covers education for WBHM in Birmingham, Alabama And we also heard reporting earlier in this episode from NPR's Anya Kamenetz You're listening to Consider This from NPR I'm Ari Shapiro