The pandemic had a devastating impact on learning, experts say, with lasting ramifications for the world of education at large.
During the chaotic period when California families were running scared, public schools were shuttered and playgrounds off-limits, an estimated 152,000 California children went missing from classrooms, according to a collaboration between Stanford professor Thomas Dee and The Associated Press.
Now, after a new analysis of the most recent data, experts say they know what happened to roughly 65,000 of those children, meaning the number of missing kids has shrunk considerably, leaving only an estimated 87,000 children still missing from public school rolls. The mystery of exactly where they went lingers, however.
This analysis tracked plummeting public school enrollment from 2019-20, when the pandemic first struck, to 2022-23, by the time schools had reopened. During that rocky…
