California’s missing kids: Much of the loss explained

The pandemic had a devastating impact on learning, experts say, with lasting ramifications for the world of education at large.

During the chaotic period when California families were running scared, public schools were shuttered and playgrounds off-limits, an estimated 152,000 California children went missing from classrooms, according to a collaboration between Stanford professor Thomas Dee and The Associated Press.

Now, after a new analysis of the most recent data, experts say they know what happened to roughly 65,000 of those children, meaning the number of missing kids has shrunk considerably, leaving only an estimated 87,000 children still missing from public school rolls. The mystery of exactly where they went lingers, however.

This analysis tracked plummeting public school enrollment from 2019-20, when the pandemic first struck, to 2022-23, by the time schools had reopened. During that rocky time, the school-age cohort in California, the nation’s most populous state, plunged by about 188,000, according to census data, while the number of home-schoolers rose by 8,431 and private school enrollment grew by about 28,000, according to the report. 

Tallying all the known factors accounts for about 65,000 students of the state’s total decline of 152,000. Do the math and that leaves roughly 87,000 students, or 28% of the enrollment decline. Where these students went remains unknown, but experts suggest there are myriad factors to consider.

“These data are generative of questions that matter for education policy. … I would encourage you to think of it as an important indicator and kind of a canary in a coal mine,” Dee said.

Data suggests some of the overall decline in enrollment stems from children who have simply aged out of the system at this point. Basically, the school-age population is much smaller than it once was, with 188,000 fewer children in the 7-18 age range in 2022-23. If you were 16 when the pandemic started, you are no longer in this cohort. 

After all, California, like the rest of the nation, is grappling with the aftershocks of a declining birthrate. The state’s birth rate is at its lowest level in roughly 100 years, according to a Public Policy Institute of California report. The steep cost of child care coupled with the high cost of housing are often cited by experts as among the key reasons for the falling birth rate.

“Demographic change is continuing to accelerate,” said Dee, “the graying of the country and the continued decline in the number of school-age children.”

As a whole, there’s been an unprecedented exodus from public schools nationwide that experts say has been worse in states like California that focused on remote learning. This trend initially most deeply impacted the youngest learners, such as kindergartners, who struggled mightily with Zoom school. While many experts expected public school enrollment to bounce back sharply as the pandemic faded from view, that has not been the case.

 “At the time I thought to myself, this is likely to be a temporary phenomenon,” said Dee. “I was expecting them to crowd into kindergarten in fall of 2021 or skip ahead to first grade, having lost a key kind of developmental opportunity by forgoing kindergarten. And was surprised to see that neither occurred.” 

The continued sustained missingness in places like California and New York raises questions for which we still don’t have answers.

Thomas Dee, the Stanford education professor who led the analysis

Many families also fled the Golden State, seeking greener pastures in more affordable spots. That has led to losses in California and gains in Florida, for example.

“In many places, the demographic trends were accelerated by pandemic mobility,” said Dee, “the fact that families reshuffled around the country and out of states like California and New York.”

Many children also switched to homeschooling, which held extra appeal for parents amid recurring outbreaks. Private schools, which resumed in-person classes faster than public schools, also got a big boost. 

Outdoor education and “forest schools” also gained in popularity. Notably, many parents who first tried alternative schooling arrangements during the pandemic have stuck with their choices. 

“There’s been this resetting of enrollment patterns across public and nonpublic settings that is enduring,” Dee said. “We’re seeing that in terms of the sustained growth in nonpublic schooling. … We’re in this new normal where there’s this stickiness there.”

The bad news for public schools is that there are still tens of thousands of children who seem to have fallen off the grid. They didn’t leave the state, they didn’t go to private or homeschool. While there’s a chance some children are being homeschooled without filling out the required big pile of paperwork, there may still be a missing cohort out there.

It should be noted that possible explanations for these remaining missing kids are both numerous and complex. Some of it may be families keeping kids in preschool instead of enrolling them in kindergarten. Some of it may be high-schoolers getting jobs but not officially dropping out.

Part of it might be newly homeless families, displaced by the tidal wave of post-pandemic evictions, who can’t get the kids to school amid their other struggles. Part of it could also be the margin of error on the census population estimate. 

“The factors you mention could be occurring simultaneously,” notes Dee.

One near certainty is that the ongoing disengagement with the public school system seems to cut deep. That’s one reason chronic absenteeism has also been escalating, experts say. In the 2021-22 school year, a third of students in California’s public schools were chronically absent, an all-time high. That’s more than three times the rate of absenteeism before Covid. 

This spike also holds nationally. One analysis estimated 14 million chronically absent students during the 2021 school, an increase of nearly 7 million since 2017.

Some say it may be indicative of a lack of student and parent engagement.  Some of that dissatisfaction may have been triggered during remote learning at the height of the pandemic, some say, when parents got to experience what their children were learning firsthand. 

“The pandemic gave parents a rare window into the classroom via Zoom,” said Bill Conrad,  a Bay Area educator for 47 years and author of “The Fog of Education.”  “They were not impressed with the failed teaching practices, especially for reading. Parents elected to provide different learning opportunities for their children. Can you blame them? They are protesting with their feet.”

This trend is particularly disturbing from an equity lens, some say, because families without resources cannot simply shell out for private schools, work at home to manage homeschooling or hire tutors. That may widen the already unsettling achievement gap, some fear. 

“The biggest challenge from my point of view is the socioeconomic inequity,” said Jenny Mackenzie, director of the literacy crisis documentary “The Right to Read.” “In other words, families who would like to take a break from the public school system … cannot afford to do that.”

Some families who lost faith in the ability of schools to meet the needs of students across a wide range of issues, including literacy and numeracy, may need to feel that their voices are being heard. The pandemic was the tipping point, some say, but the issues may go beyond school closures. 

“Since the pandemic, more parents question whether their child is better off in school,” said Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit organization that runs many Bay Area child care and preschool centers. “This is good news because parents should question everything about California’s education system. Decade after decade, less than half of students are proficient in language and math. Perhaps it is the instructional methods or curriculum that lack proficiency?”

Forging stronger connections with families who face challenges with school attendance may also be part of the solution. 

“The reasons behind student absenteeism are incredibly complex, and so the responses have to be complex as well,” said Heather Hough, director of Policy Analysis for California Education, noting that the first step should be asking families what challenges they face coming to school.

Low-income students and students of color often feel less sense of belonging at school than their peers, research suggests. Strengthening that frayed bond may not be easy, some warn, but it is necessary.

“School is sometimes a source of trauma, and even intergenerational trauma, disproportionately for historically marginalized groups,” said Shantel Meek,  founding director of the Children’s Equity Project, an advocacy and research organization based at Arizona State University. “We’re all familiar with the data on harsh discipline and how Black children are more harshly disciplined than everybody else, despite not having any worse behavior.”

Some suggest we may be approaching a watershed moment, a time for education to pivot to better meet changing student needs.

“Public education has failed to shift post-pandemic to the new way of learning,” said Alex Cherniss, superintendent of Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified. “Now students and families are seeing alternative ways, and often better ways, to learn.  As a result, homeschooling is at an all-time high, remote learning is mainstream, and public school can either evolve or continue to deteriorate.”

Amid the looming ambiguities, one certainty emerges. Snowballing enrollment declines are poised to undermine the financial stability of the public school system just as pandemic relief funds expire and learning loss deepens. 

Enrollment has fallen at nearly three-quarters of California school districts over the last five years, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, and these losses are expected to continue, with state officials estimating a drop of over a half million students by 2031–32.

“That’s so important at this moment,” Dee said, “because we’re seeing many school districts struggle with chronic under-enrollment of their schools and having to reckon with the fiscal reality of that at a time when ESSER (emergency school relief) funds are going to sunset.”