The Great Education Escape Student and teacher absences expose the failure of government-run schools; parents must step up. By Larry Sand
https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/26/the-great-education-escape/
Late last month, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) published the enrollment count for the 2023-24 school year. The report showed that 9 of the top 10 and 38 of the 50 largest districts have lost students since 2019-20, while 31 of the 50 largest districts lost students between the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 school years.
All in all, the loss amounts to a 2.5% drop between fall 2019 and fall 2023. Schools at the pre-K-8 grade level showed the greatest declines, where enrollment dropped by 4.5% over the four-year period.
And the exodus is ongoing. According to the latest federal estimates, public schools are projected to lose 2.7 million students, for a 5.5% decline, from 2022 to 2031. That includes a loss of 1.8 million students in pre-K-8, a 5.4% loss, and 883,000 students in grades 9-12, a 5.7% decline.
On a similar note, the Fordham Institute recently reported that nearly 1 in 12 public schools nationwide saw student enrollment declines of about 20% since the year before the COVID-19 pandemic began. Chronically low-performing schools were hit particularly hard. According to the study, they were more than twice as likely to have sizable enrollment drops compared to other public schools.
It follows that the loss of students in the pre-K-12 sector is a harbinger of what’s to come in higher education. In early January, the Hechinger Report disclosed that the public university system is struggling to reduce a deep deficit that threatens to “permanently shutter several campuses after dramatic drop-offs in enrollment and revenue. While much attention has been focused on how enrollment declines are putting private, nonprofit colleges out of business at an accelerating rate—at least 17 of them in 2024—public universities and colleges face their own existential crises.
“State institutions nationwide are being merged, and campuses shut down, many of them in areas where there is already little access to higher education.”
The question then becomes, “Why are people shunning public schools?”
COVID certainly put a hit on the system, as do declining birthrates, but there is another critical factor. An April report from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, which surveyed more than 1,000 Gen Z students between the ages of 12 and 18, found that just 48% of those enrolled in middle or high school felt motivated to go to school. Only half said they do something interesting in school every day. Similarly, a new EdChoice survey finds that 64% of teens said school is boring, and 30% feel it is a waste of time.
The general public isn’t too happy with the current state of government-run schools either. A just-released poll from the Pew Research Center reveals that 51% of Americans say K-12 education is on the wrong track, with 69% saying that it’s because “core academic subjects, like reading, math, science, and social studies” are being neglected. Additionally, 54% say teachers are “bringing their personal, political, and social views into the classroom.”
The Pew results align with a 2023 Gallup poll that revealed Americans have soured on public education. Just 26% of respondents indicate a “great deal/fair amount” of confidence in our government-run schools.
It’s not only increasing the number of kids who are ditching school; their teachers are also.
A May 2022 federal survey found that chronic teacher absenteeism (missing 11 or more days of school per year due to illness or personal reasons) during the 2021-22 school year increased in 72% of schools compared to an average pre-pandemic school year. In 37% of schools, teacher absenteeism increased significantly. The situation is particularly grim in Illinois, with just 66% of teachers having fewer than 10 absences in 2022.
It’s worth noting that teachers playing hooky is not a new phenomenon. In 2017, a study released by the Fordham Institute, using data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, delved into the depth of the absentee problem. The analysis showed that on average, teachers miss about eight school days a year due to sick and personal leave, while the average U.S. worker takes only about three-and-a-half sick days per annum. Worse, the study showed that 28.3% of teachers in traditional public schools are chronically absent. Interestingly, the corresponding number in charter schools is just 10.3%.
So, while teachers and students are forsaking school, parents need to step up, but too many are in the dark about the problems. American parents are far more bullish about the quality of learning in schools than their kids, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education. While substantially less than half of all high schoolers say they believe they’re learning a lot daily, over 70% of parents say they are. The divergence in perceptions between adults and children grows over time, driven mainly by a sizable drop in the number of students reporting positive experiences in school after the elementary years.
“The figures point to a failure not only to keep students engaged in school but also to keep families informed about the true state of their children’s learning,” said Rebecca Winthrop, the report’s lead author and a Brookings senior fellow. She added, “Parents themselves find it ‘hard to admit’ that K–12 education isn’t offering all that it should.”
Parents clearly hold the key. They need to take greater charge of their children’s education. Blithely sending children off to public school daily and assuming that they will get an education that will prepare them to be productive citizens and make a living wage may have been justified in the 1950s, but today, it’s a crapshoot. Homeschooling, microschooling, and private schooling are all typically superior to what children experience when they are entangled in the government education complex.
America’s kids and the future of our country depend on a rapid course change. ASAP.
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