Thousands of kindergartners no-show, putting their futures at risk, experts say
by Barnini Chakraborty, Senior Investigations Reporter |
| August 14, 2021 07:00 AM
Hundreds of thousands of kindergartners across the country expected to enroll in traditional schools or attend online classes have been no-shows.
The coronavirus pandemic, the economic fallout, and two years of inconsistent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have worried parents to the point that they've chosen to forgo traditional schools altogether. But new data from the federal government seem to show that the decision to keep the children at home might have done more harm than good in the long run.
In all, more than 1 million children who had been expected to enroll in online learning or attend a traditional school failed to show up over the past 18 months since the pandemic hit the United States. The missing students were concentrated in the younger grades, with the steepest drop coming from kindergartners. According to the data, which analyzed enrollment at 70,000 public schools, more than 340,000 kindergartners were no-shows.
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