Education ExodusParents are abandoning schools in large numbers, but teachers are not.
By Larry Sand
August 15, 2022
School reopening time is almost upon us, and large numbers of parents have opted out of government-run schools. Over the past two school years, k-12 enrollment has declined by nearly 3 percent, or about 1.3 million students nationwide, according to a recent study by the American Enterprise Institute. Children who had gone to schools that were shuttered during the COVID panic have been much less likely to return to a traditional public school (TPS).
Big city school districts have seen massive exoduses. In New York City, there were over one million enrolled students in the 2019-20 school year, but the city anticipates just 760,439 children will be attending by the end of 2022-23.
Chicago’s students are also leaving the plantation. There were about 400,000 attendees in 2010. That number dwindled to about 330,000 as of March 2021, with much bigger losses expected when updated enrollment numbers are released. Also, of Chicago’s 478 traditional public schools, almost one third are less than half full. Additionally, the 20 most abandoned schools in the Windy City are only 5 percent to 25 percent full.
Los Angeles schools are also bleeding children. Enrollment at district schools peaked in 2002‐03 at 747,000. But 19 years later that number has plunged to 430,000 students. The 2020-2021 school year was particularly jarring as attendance dropped by more than 27,000 students, a decline of close to 6 percent, a steeper slide than in any recent year. Even more shocking is that, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, nearly half of Los Angeles Unified students—more than 200,000 children—have been chronically absent this last school year, meaning they have missed at least 9 percent of the academic year.
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While children are abandoning the traditional public schools, are teachers bidding adieu also? According to recent reports, they are—or are about to—in droves. In February 2022, the National Education Association released the results of a poll which found that “55 percent of educators are thinking about leaving the profession earlier than they had planned.” More recently, the Rand Corp. reported that about one-third of teachers and principals said they were likely to leave their current job.
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The shortage scenario is highly unlikely, however. As I wrote recently, teacher shortage hysteria has been with us since 1920. Additionally, “multiple studies of teacher turnover have not found evidence of unusually large attrition,” according to a new report by the Rand Corp. Yes, polling teachers about what they plan to do as opposed to what they actually do nets very different results. The Rand report also explains, “In short, we believe it is districts’ increase in number of staff that they seek to employ rather than an exodus from teaching that is straining the teacher labor market. More than three-quarters of surveyed district leaders indicated that they have expanded their substitute and/or regular teaching staff above prepandemic levels as of spring 2022.”
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Source:
https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/15/education-exodus/
