Thousands of students in Missouri have left public school in the last four years, in line with a national trend of more families disengaging from public education.
, Big Local News and Stanford University economist Thomas Dee found enrollment in Missouri鈥檚 public schools dropped by 2% from the 2019-2020 school year to the 2022-2023 school year 鈥� making up nearly 18,000 students.
Nationally, private schooling grew nearly 8% and homeschooling grew by nearly 27% during the same time period among more than 30 states with credible private, public or homeschool enrollment data.
Collin Hitt, executive director of the , which studies education in Missouri, said it鈥檚 been an open question whether the state鈥檚 homeschooling jump was temporary.
鈥淕iven the fact that we're seeing public K-12 enrollments stay relatively flat, it probably suggests this is something that's going to continue for some time, which is a major development,鈥� Hitt said.
Thousands of students across the country still haven鈥檛 returned to the classroom since the pandemic shut schools down for months. An estimated , meaning demographic changes or increases in private school or homeschooling couldn't account for their disappearance from public education.
Students have since slowly made their way back to varying forms of education or aged out of school, leaving .
Missouri doesn鈥檛 track private school data and doesn鈥檛 legally require parents to tell the state when they homeschool their child. However, most parents will notify their public school district if they switch to homeschooling.
Based on that limited data, Missouri has seen a 34% increase in homeschooling since 2019 鈥� but that doesn鈥檛 include children who never attended public schools to begin with.
Education leaders anticipated a drop in enrollment across the country because of declining birth rates. U.S. birth rates for more than a decade, hitting a record low in 2020.
The AP found there are 3,000 fewer school-aged children in Missouri compared to when the pandemic began.
Hitt said even if birth rates remain flat going forward, the declines between 2010 and 2020 have yet to age their way through the system, which will result in lower school enrollment.
However, he said birthrates can鈥檛 explain the steep drop in enrollment after the pandemic hit.
鈥淲hat the pandemic did is it exposed more parents to homeschooling and virtual schooling,鈥� Hitt said. 鈥淚t also changed the work dynamic for tons of families, where tons of families are now working from home all or most of the time.鈥�
That, combined with more private school vouchers and to spend on public school alternatives, Hitt said, has created the perfect conditions for a homeschooling boom.
Dannielle Joy Davis, known by many as Dr. Joy, runs a program for homeschooling families called "The Circle of Excellence" and is a professor of higher education at St. Louis University.
She began homeschooling her son before the pandemic, but said it was some families鈥� first exposure to homeschooling.
鈥淥nce students experienced that and enjoyed it, and once parents saw the joy of learning in their own households, as you imagine, some parents said, 鈥溾�楾his is nice 鈥� we should keep doing this,鈥欌�� Davis said.
She said parents who choose to homeschool are drawn to the freedom to choose how to teach their children. For example, her son took a scuba class with a certified diver because he loves marine biology.
Davis said more families are turning to homeschooling for another reason.
Society and schools have seen dramatic changes in the last several years. Repeated mass shootings have heightened . A white Minneapolis police officer鈥檚 2020 murder of George Floyd kicked off and police reform. Republican state legislators in Missouri have targeted school curricula around history and race .
Davis said some parents see homeschooling as an opportunity to protect their children from bullying, sexism or racism at school 鈥� and even the stress of having to go through a metal detector to enter the building.
鈥淎 large part of the shift is out of love,鈥� Davis said. 鈥淭he parents鈥� love of the children to say, 鈥楲ook, the system is not the ideal in terms of cultivating a safe, peaceful, loving environment for my kid and look, I get to do something about it.鈥欌��
Thinking 鈥渟maller and smarter鈥�
Hitt said declining public school enrollment has some potential benefits, like smaller class sizes. He said that could also allow the state to give schools more money per pupil in the short term, since the state legislature is used to appropriating a certain amount for K-12 education.
鈥淚t's possible that these enrollment declines will take some pressure off of the system and let them get down to a size that might actually work better for kids,鈥� Hitt said.
But districts that see a significant decline in enrollment could have a substantial drop in state and federal resources, Hitt said, since those are typically determined on a per-pupil basis.
The steep enrollment drop following the pandemic has mostly leveled, but Hitt said schools will still have to cope with the fallout of declining birth rates for years to come.
鈥淕oing forward, I think 20 years from now, when we look back at who the most effective educational leaders were of this generation," Hitt said. "It's going to be the people who figured this out; how do we get smaller, and smarter and better all at once?鈥�
