Media

"Preliminary enrollment figures for the current school year (21-22) suggest that these overall declines will persist into 2022. Few districts have released their figures. Hawaii, one of the few to do so, has reported a loss. Pre-pandemic (2019-20), Hawaii's school district enrolled 179,331 pupils. It reported 4,627 fewer students in the pandemic school year (2020-21). And in Autumn 2021 it reported 3,104 fewer students than in the previous year--a 4% decline from pre-pandemic enrollment. 

...Of those who left Hawaii's school system in the 2020-21 academic year, for example, some left the state or started home-schooling, and a small proportion went to private schools. But 2,665 pupils are unaccounted for, says Mark Murphy, professor of education at the University of Hawaii at Manoa." 

"Disenrollment has persisted in Hawaii which has already released student counts for this year. Total kindergarten enrollment on the islands -- which operate as a single, statewide school district -- saw one of the steepest declines in the country during the pandemic, falling from 13,074 in 2019 to 11,103 in 2020. But while some have predicted an early education "surge" this year as parents finally place their kids in kindergarten, it has so far been absent; kindergarten enrollment is up by about 350, but still remains about 12 percent below the pre-pandemic status quo. 'What we're seeing is that the fall 2021 counts are not rebounding to what we saw [before the pandemic],' said Mark Murphy, Dee's co-author on the Massachusetts paper.

"Analyses are limited, but a deep dive into preliminary data from Massachusetts’ public schools by Thomas Dee of Stanford University and Mark Murphy of the University of Hawaii at Manoa shows that most traditional public districts in the state—274 out of 289—had enrolment declines this year in comparison with last year. Massachusetts experienced a 4% statewide loss in this academic year (37,363 pupils) compared with the year before."

"An important new study — from Thomas Dee, a Stanford professor, and Mark Murphy, a graduate student there — solves the mystery. Dee and Murphy have uncovered a mass displacement of American children that had previously gone overlooked."

"So, what could possibly be wrong about aggressively enforcing immigration law in this way? A growing body of research shows that they produce significant harm to children, schools and communities. My recent research with Stanford University graduate student Mark Murphy illustrates some of these consequences." 

"More than 300,000 Hispanic students have been displaced from K-12 schools in communities where local police have forged partnerships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to better enforce immigration laws, according to a new study from researchers at Stanford University."