Since the pandemic first upended American education, an estimated 50,000 students are still missing from any kind of U.S. school. That’s according to an Associated Press analysis of public, private and homeschool enrollment as of fall 2022, and U.S. Census data in 22 states, plus Washington, D.C. The reasons students left school during the pandemic are varied, and still not fully understood. The number of missing students has fallen significantly from the fall of 2021, when over 230,000 students were still unaccounted for in an analysis by AP, Big Local News and Stanford University economist Thomas Dee.
