She’d be a senior right now, preparing for graduation in a few months, probably leading her school’s modern dance troupe, and taking art classes. Instead, since the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, Kailani Taylor-Cribb hasn't attended any classes at the institution that served as her high school.

She is one of the countless students who dropped out of public schools during the pandemic and didn't continue their education elsewhere. According to research conducted by The Associated Press, Stanford University's Big Local News project, and Stanford professor of education Thomas Dee, 230,000 students in 21 states had absences that could not be explained.

According to information that is readily available, neither of these students relocated outside of the state nor did they enroll in a private school or homeschool.

In short, they’re missing.

After the pandemic closed all schools nationwide in 2020, "Missing" students received crisis-level attention. If these students didn't return, school administrators and some state officials openly expressed concern about the financial difficulties their districts would face.

The money from the local, state, and federal governments is represented by each student. The need to track down former students who are still eligible for free public education but are not attending any classes at all has vanished. Early in the pandemic, school staff visited homes to speak with and engage children. Tom Sheppard, a parent and member of the city's Panel for Educational Policy, said, "Everyone is talking about declining enrollment, but no one is talking about who's leaving the system and why."

Our analysis shows where the students went.

Between the 2019–2020 and 2021–2022 academic years, enrollment decreased by about 700,000 students in the 21 states where data was available. These students were enrolled in private schools to some extent. About 103,000 more students are enrolled in private schools across the states included in the analysis.
Many more students began attending home schools.

Around 184,000 more kids are now enrolled in homeschooling, which is a significant increase. Additionally, some families relocated out of state, which contributed to some enrollment declines. According to census estimates, the number of school-age children in the states we looked at decreased by about 183,000. There are now thought to be 230,000 students missing from the data. These are kids who chose not to enroll in private schools, homeschool themselves, or leave the state.

The analysis draws attention to tens of thousands of pupils who might have quit school or failed to learn the fundamentals of reading and school routines in kindergarten and first grade. Thousands of students require assistance returning to school, the workforce, and regular life.

Sonja Santelises, the chief executive officer of Baltimore's public schools, said of her fellow administrators, "That's the stuff that no one wants to talk about." She said, "We want to say it's outside stuff" like taking care of younger siblings or having to work that prevents kids from going back to school. She worries, however, that young people don't always have supportive adults with whom to talk about their personal concerns.

Test results and performance have received a lot of attention in discussions about how the pandemic has affected children. Dee, however, asserts that the data point to a requirement to learn more about the kids who aren't in school and how that will impact their development.

He declared, "This is compelling evidence that tells us we need to be paying closer attention to the children who are no longer enrolled in public schools." The AP learned about students and families skipping school for a variety of reasons over the course of months of reporting. Some students were unable to study online and instead found employment.

Some students experienced such severe developmental and academic setbacks during the protracted online learning that they lost all knowledge of how to act or learn in a classroom. Many of these students, while largely absent from class, are still officially on school rosters. That makes it harder to truly count the number of missing students. The real tally of young people not receiving an education is likely far greater than the 230,000 figure calculated by the AP and Stanford.

Before the pandemic even started, many students were having difficulties. At her school, Kailani in particular had started to feel excluded. A few months before the pandemic struck, she was in the ninth grade, unhappy at home, and had been transferred to a different math class due to subpar performance.

Forcing Kailani to take the blame when her classmates misbehaved, Kailani claims the white teaching assistant who was assigned to help her focus in her new class targeted her because she is Black.
Additionally, she disallowed Kailani from using her headphones in class while working independently, which Kailani claims was allowed in her special education plan and would have helped her focus.

Following that, Kailani stopped taking math classes. In the end, Kailani's anxiety from being in the pandemic and receiving at-home education was relieved. Ultimately, the pandemic and at-home education relieved the anxiety Kailani felt from being in the school building. Kailani preferred online school because she could turn off her camera and engage as she chose.

She left after the reopening of the school. A representative for Cambridge Schools investigated Kailani's grievances. Sujata Wycoff said that several people "demonstrated great concern and compassion towards her and the challenges she was facing outside of school."

In order to determine how many students have vanished, AP and Big Local News combed through every state in the union in search of the most recent information on both public and private schools, as well as population estimates for people of school age. Between the 2019–2020 and 2021–2022 school years, the combined enrollment of public schools in the 21 states plus Washington, D.C., decreased by over 700,000 students. Over 100,000 additional students are enrolled in private schools in those states. However, the data revealed 230,000 students who were neither enrolled in a private school nor homeschooled.

States with optional kindergarten had a higher likelihood of having more unaccounted-for students, indicating that many young children who would have otherwise started school are also missing. The data showed that over 150,000 students were missing from California alone, and close to 60,000 from New York. It discovered almost no missing students at all, indicating that something unusual happened during the pandemic. The actual number of absent students is probably much higher. The analysis excludes information from 29 states, including Texas and Illinois, as well as the unidentified number of "ghost students," or students who are registered but rarely attend class.

When schools were closed due to the pandemic, some students found it impossible to cope with the loss of their physical connection to their teachers and school. When the campus closed in March 2020, José Escobar, an immigrant from El Salvador, had just started the 10th grade at Boston Public Schools. His school's laptop was broken, and the district took several weeks to issue a replacement due to administrative red tape. After losing his position as a restaurant owner, his father stopped paying their phone bills.

He hadn't logged into remote classes for months due to broken technology. Although he is still legally allowed to attend school in Boston at age 21, he claims he is too old for high school and must work to support his family.

These are all former students who have probably been removed from enrollment databases. Many of the other students are not getting any education. Last year, nearly 50% of students in Los Angeles missed more than 10% of the school year due to chronic absences. Even more students with disabilities are affected by these statistics: Data from the district show that 55% missed at least 18 days of instruction. The number of students who missed more than that is unknown. Requests for these details were not answered by the city's Unified School District.

Officials in Los Angeles have been open about their efforts to track down unschooled children and assist in removing barriers that keep them from attending school. But for some students and their parents, the issue is with the educational system, which they claim consistently fails their kids. Parents are devastated, according to Allison Hertog, who represents about thirty families whose children missed a lot of learning because California's physical classrooms were closed for more than a year due to the early pandemic.

He was transferred from school to school prior to the pandemic shutdowns because teachers were unable to address his impulsive behavior. His mother had trouble using the school's WiFi hotspots and couldn't get home internet during online classes. She couldn't keep an eye on Ezekiel online because she was a home health aide.

A district was ordered to give Ezekiel a spot at a new school with a special plan to ease him back into learning and trusting teachers after an administrative judge ruled that Los Angeles' schools had violated his rights. His mother stopped sending him to school in October because the institution didn't adhere to the plan. Miesha Clarke declared, "I can't trust them." Inquiries about Ezekiel's case were not answered by Los Angeles school officials. Ezekiel registered for a free online public school for California students last month.

His attorney, Hertog, worries the program won`t work for someone with Ezekiel`s needs and is looking for yet another option with more flexibility. At least three of the students Hertog has represented, including Ezekiel, have disappeared from school for long periods since in-person instruction resumed. Their situations were avoidable, she said: “It`s pretty disgraceful that the school systems allowed this to go on for so long.”

When Kailani stopped logging into her virtual classes during the spring of her sophomore year, she received several emails from the school telling her she`d been truant. Between two to four weeks after she disappeared from Zoom school, her homeroom advisor and Spanish teacher each wrote to her, asking where she was. And the school`s dean of students called her great-grandmother, her legal guardian, to inform her about Kailani`s disappearance from school. They didn`t communicate further, according to Kailani. She teaches dance to elementary school kids now. She wants to take choreography classes.

Looking back, she is aware that circumstances could have been different. While she says she has no regrets about dropping out of high school, if a teacher or staff member had shown more concern for her needs and support as a Black student, she claims she might have reconsidered.

All they needed to do, according to Kailani, was act. There were so many opportunities for them to act. They did nothing, too.