Where are Conn.’s missing students?

The pandemic offers an invaluable math lesson in Connecticut. It’s not surprising that the numbers for public school enrollment in 2020 do not look like the numbers for the previous year. CT Mirror reporter Jacqueline Rabe Thomas did the math. Public schools lost one of every 33 students; private schools dropped one in 16. Our cities, home to the most vulnerable populations, have been the hardest hit, with Hartford noting a loss of one in 13 students and Bridgeport one in 17.

Numbers don’t lie, but they can fib. This data is somewhat distorted because many parents of the youngest future students opted to delay introducing them to the world of academia because of COVID-19. School officials say this accounts for about 44 percent of the missing students.

They attribute another 17 percent to parents who joined to the ranks of home-school educators.

Do the math and we’re still left with 6,981 absent students.

Stronger state policies would make it easier to do the calculations. But the Connecticut Department of Education no longer tracks student transiency, nor does it require parents to inform districts if they transition to home schooling. If ever there was a time to lock down policies to better track student welfare, this is it.

Two years ago, pre-pandemic, Gov. Ned Lamont proposed legislation that would mandate registration of home-schoolers every year. The initiative was in response to a study that revealed 36 percent of families that opted for education at home had been reported for suspected neglect or abuse to the Department of Children and Families.

That can cast a shadow of suspicion on any family that home-schools. The objection from protesters in Hartford was loud, and the registration requirement was abandoned.

“One of our biggest concerns is how much of the declines in enrollment are attributable to students leaving the education system altogether and not receiving any education. Right now, it’s very difficult to identify that group of students that has fallen through the cracks in the system,” said Michael Morton, the deputy executive director of the School and State Finance Project, which lobbies for school reforms.

If it’s hard to count the students, it’s even harder to tally those cracks.

While our neighboring states, including New York and Massachusetts, have much stricter regulations, Connecticut tilts more toward the likes of Oklahoma and Idaho when it comes to monitoring home schooling.

If there is a lesson from the pandemic that applies, it’s that people working from home need the kind of access to services afforded to their counterparts in the traditional workplace. The same needs apply to the home classroom, including access to state support.

Fuzzy math about missing students means the enrollment numbers could be even worse than suspected. A flood of late preschoolers in the fall could skew the next round of information as well.

We need better data. Any educator knows that guesses, even educated ones, seldom lead to the right answers.

Numbers don’t lie, but they can fib. This data is somewhat distorted because many parents of the youngest future students opted to delay introducing them to the world of academia because of COVID-19.