Kindergarten exodus: 340,000 absentees
Many of the nation’s most vulnerable did not enroll in local schools
The New York Times
In a sweltering July afternoon, Solomon Carson, 6, jumped off the stoop of his family’s tidy row house in West Philadelphia, full of what his father, David, called “unspent energy.”
When a stranger asked his name, he answered brightly, but added that he couldn’t spell it. “I can help you with that,” his father said, patiently pronouncing each letter, with Solomon repeating after him.
Solomon was supposed to have learned the basics in kindergarten this past year, but his first year of formal education was anything but.
When COVID -19 closed classrooms, his parents chose not to enroll him in city schools that they already had doubts about. They were not working and decided to teach him at home along with his two older brothers. And they signed him up for a virtual charter school that advertised in-person tutoring — and failed to provide it.
Now, as Solomon heads to first grade, Carson is clear-eyed about where his son stands academically. “I really think we can improve,” he said.
Solomon is part of a vast exodus from local public schools.
As the pandemic upended life in the United States, more than 1 million children who had been expected to enroll in these schools did not show up, either in person or online. The missing students were concentrated in the younger grades, with the steepest drop in kindergarten — more than 340,000 students, according to government data.
Now, the first analysis of enrollment at 70,000 public schools across 33 states offers a detailed portrait of these kindergartners. It shows that just as the pandemic lay bare vast disparities in health care and income, it also hardened inequities in education, setting back some of the most vulnerable students before they spent even one day in a classroom.
The analysis by The New York Times in conjunction with Stanford University shows that in those 33 states, 10,000 local public schools lost at least 20 percent of their kindergartners. In 2019 and in 2018, only 4,000 or so schools experienced such steep drops.
The months of closed classrooms took a toll on nearly all students, and families of all levels of income and education scrambled to help their children make up for the gaps.
But the most startling declines were in neighborhoods below and just above the poverty line, where the average household income for a family of four was $35,000 or less.
The drop was 28 percent larger in schools in those communities than in the rest of the country.
In the Philadelphia school district, where almost all students are from low-income families, kindergarten enrollment declined by more than a quarter between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2020.
The drop was three times the national rate, accounting for 2,700 students.
While kindergarten is optional in many states, educators say there is no great substitute for quality, in-person kindergarten.
For many students, it’s their introduction to school. They are taught to cooperate and to identify numbers and letters.
They learn early phonics and number sense — the concept of bigger and smaller quantities.
And kindergarten is often where children are first diagnosed with disabilities like autism spectrum disorder.
Yet in the country’s poorest neighborhoods, tens of thousands of 6-year-olds will begin first grade having missed out on a traditional kindergarten experience.
“We have to be deeply concerned,” said Thomas S. Dee, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, who worked with the Times on the analysis.
The data covered two-thirds of all public schools. It showed that remote schooling was a main factor driving enrollment declines.
Districts that went strictly remote experienced 42 percent more decline than those that offered full-time in-person learning, according to a new research paper by Dee and colleagues, posted Saturday.
While some of these schools were losing students before the pandemic, the declines between fall 2019 and fall 2020 were significantly steeper.
City schools, which serve disproportionate numbers of low-income students of color, were the most likely to shutter classrooms for extended periods.
Remote instruction has been among the most divisive issues of the pandemic. It is supported by some parents, policymakers and teachers unions, who are worried about the spread of the virus in classrooms. But as evidence emerged, as early as last summer, that the health risk could be mitigated, many pediatricians and child development experts warned that school closures would severely affect children and their families, both emotionally and academically.
Interviews in three cities that experienced some of the biggest drops in kindergarten enrollment — Philadelphia; Jackson, Miss.; and Honolulu — showed the difficulty of trying to educate the youngest students remotely, and how little parents trusted their schools to make the shift.
“A lot of Black and brown families kept their children home for good reason,” said Kayla Patrick, an analyst at the Education Trust, an advocacy group focused on low-income students and students of color.
“They need to know in-person instruction is proven to be better.
“We want to make sure that schools are rebuilding that trust.”
In Hawaii, schools operated entirely remotely last fall and experienced one of the biggest statewide kindergareten declines in the countrya loss of 14 percent between fall 2019 and fall 202.
Linapuni Elementary School, which sits in a large public housing complex in Honolulu, the decline was even more alarming: Kindergarten enrollment shrank by half, from 65 students in 2019 to 32 students in 2020, according to the Times data.
Many of its students are from Pacific Islander immigrant families that do not speak English, according to Tami Haili, the principal. Eighty-five percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
For many families, guiding kindergartners through online classes was all too much. When Linapuni reopened classrooms in the new year, Haili said, only 10 or so students missing in the fall enrolled.
In Jackson, Miss., after the school district offered only online education in the fall of 2020, many essential workers had to find someone to watch their kindergartners, remote school or not. They turned to day care.
Single parents, often with jobs at health care centers, fast food restaurants or the nearby Continental tire plant, turned up at Leaps and Bounds Developmental Academy, which cared for seven children who were kindergarten age.
Only two participated in remote learning, said Christi Jackson Payton, the day care’s director.
But because the center focuses on early reading skills, like phonics, Jackson Payton said, day care may have been a better choice than online kindergarten.
At the very least, she said, “The children that were here received more direct learning.”