America’s education system continues to reckon with the enormous disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although some students and families became well-acclimated with the distance learning process overall, many others found it challenging—and often impossible—to participate in because of persistent barriers like job losses, lack of stable housing, insufficient internet access and dysfunctional devices. And across the country, educators quickly became aware of a widespread trend: children were flat-out missing from school, virtual or otherwise. Some parents had turned to homeschooling or pods; others enrolled their children in private schools that opened in-person learning, and some moved to distant cities or states where they felt their children would have a better chance learning.
Comprehensive national data is not yet available to show the full scope of disenrollment from public schools, but throughout the current school year, individual districts from Florida to Alaska and points in between reported significant enrollment declines ranging into the tens of thousands.
To examine these issues from the perspective of parents, the Progressive Policy Institute’s Curtis Valentine sat down for a Q&A with Keri Rodrigues of the National Parents Union, who shared her thoughts on the impact of parents pulling children out of schools during the pandemic.
Read the full interview on The 74.
