More than one million children aren’t in school

Since the coronavirus pandemic outbreak in March 2020, more than one million American children of school age have not enrolled in local schools. The New York Times reports on the basis of an analysis in collaboration with Stanford University. The data covered two thirds of all public schools in the US.

The most dramatic decline in the number of newly enrolled students occurred in neighborhoods below and just above the poverty line, where the average annual income for a family of four was $ 35,000 or less.

Among the more than a million children who did not show up at their local schools, physically or online, government figures show that more than 340,000 preschoolers. In the states of Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and North Carolina, 60 percent of missing preschoolers were still absent by the spring of 2021.

Remote education in the US is a source of much division. It is supported by parents, policy makers and teachers who are concerned about the spread of the virus in classrooms. But when evidence emerged in the summer of 2020 that the health risk could be reduced, many pediatricians and development experts warned that school closures could have serious consequences for children, both emotionally and academically.