Hundreds of thousands of students across the nation have disappeared from public schools since the onset of the pandemic, an analysis from The Associated Press, Stanford University's Big Local News project and Stanford Education professor Thomas Dee showed.
But in Tennessee, most students remain accounted for.
Because while the state's public school enrollment dropped by 1.4% since the school year that began in the fall of 2019, the loss can be attributed to an increase in private-school and home-schooled enrollment, Dee said in an email.
Nationwide, public schools lost around 1.2 million students between the 2019-20 and 2021-22 school years -- about 2.5% of the public school population, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
And there are at least 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences cannot be explained, the analysis found. Those students did not move out of state and didn't enroll in private or home schooling, according to AP.
Tennessee's public school enrollment decrease can be explained by a 24% increase in private-school enrollment and a 20% increase in home-schooled enrollment since 2019 -- around 21,000 students who switched from public to nonpublic schools since 2019.
Dee said it may also be due to the state's school-age population growing while the nation saw a decline of 0.5%.
"Based on the comparative magnitudes of these changes, I would not characterize Tennessee as a state that appears to have the substantial 'missing kids' problem we see in other states," Dee said.
California and New York are among the top states with the highest number of missing students, 160,000 and 50,000, respectively.
Locally, Hamilton County Schools did not see a significant decline in enrollment.
Chief Strategy Officer Shannon Moody said the district intervened on that matter early on.
"In March of 2020, when schools systems switched to virtual learning for the remainder of the school year, HCS pivoted groups of people to a team working on tracking contact with students to ensure they were accounted for absent of physical building attendance," Moody said in an email. "Throughout the pandemic, HCS adjusted efforts to meet the needs of our students and families and remain connected during that time. While we can never fully connect those efforts to our lack of enrollment declines compared to what was seen across the country, we do believe that they had a large impact in our consistent enrollment trends and continued connections with students and families."
Chattanooga Southeast Tennessee Home Education Association Secretary Jeannette Tulis said she believes the uptick in home schooling is due to parents wanting more control over their children's education.
"I've met quite a few parents who, during the pandemic, realized that they really didn't like some of the things they were seeing on the Zoom classes that were being held," Tulis said in a phone call. "I think that's when some decisions were made to maybe not go back into the system at that point."
But Dee said the increase in private and home-schooled enrollment should raise issues for the state.
"For example, are all the newly home-schooled children thriving?" Dee said. "And have families been foregoing pre-K learning opportunities? Will those lost opportunities be reflected in students' readiness to learn and future test scores?"
Contact Carmen Nesbitt at cnesbitt@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327.