the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, a year ago, 57% of public schools all across the U.S. chose online learning over in-person or hybrid teaching.
The result was a parental revolt. Many switched to private schools. Some tried to enroll their kids in districts with in-person classes. Some shifted to home schooling, while others organized tutors and “learning pods” with other parents. Some parents in the early grades just withheld their kids from the public schools.
A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic research documents how this led to a dramatic decline in U.S. school enrollment last year, of which around 25% is explained by the switch to remote learning. Stanford economist Thomas Dee and colleagues report that the decline was far larger in those districts that switched to online learning.
The decline in enrollment was concentrated in kindergarten and the first grade.
The authors predict that the decision of so many districts to offer only remote learning may lead to long term consequences for public school enrollment. More and more Americans want out of the public schools, and the government should let the education dollars follow the kids, not the teachers unions.
