The Great School Resignation?
There are a number of reasons why parents send their children to school, and for most families It's a combination of factors:? (1) to pass on values to children, (2) to get children socialized, (3) to give children skills, (4) you can children knowledge,(5) to babysit children so that the parents can take care of the home and work.?
Also, there have always been a minority of students who were educated at home,? 3% of students in the year 2000.? Today, the number of students who were homeschooled is 11%. That’s a 266% increase in 20 years.?
And the larger economy, we have seen a number of individuals change occupations. It's often been called “The Great Resignation”. The Covid-19 pandemic closures of 2020 allowed for individuals to test out what life would be to work from home. During that time, many found themselves to be far more productive than they were at work. Instead of having to deal with traffic, parking, office politics, and traffic on the way back home, they could focus their efforts on their job. They tested out a new life and many found it to be to their liking. In the same way, many families tried out homeschool due to the school closures, and some found it to their liking.?
For some families it was about control, being able to know exactly what their children were being taught. For others it was the ability to participate more in their children's lives…? Whatever the reason may be, we are seeing a great resignation in schools too. Since the Omicron variant of Covid-19, we have seen? many schools continue their pandemic protocols . That coupled with more? students getting sick, due to the increased transmissibility of that specific variant, it is not surprising to have 15 to 20% of the student body out sick at any given time. This extended lack of student body cohesion continues to influence the great resignation in schools.?
Next, considering the academic path for students 10 to 15 years ago, it was very common for students to remain in 1-3 schools for their entire academic career. Perhaps they went to an elementary school, a different middle school, and then the local high school; they might even have attended a single? K-12 private school. Today, we are seeing an increase in mobility when it comes to students' educational choices. It is not uncommon to see, for example, a student attending one school for kindergarten, doing homeschool for the first grade, returning to the same school for the second grade, attending yet another school for the third through fifth grade, going off to Middle School, and then going back to homeschool for his/her high school career.?
This is part of a broader shift which has seen schools transforming from academic institutions to “providers of educational services” in the minds of parents. From their point of view, it is true that students are taught academic skills and knowledge in a school, but they could also learn it by themselves through Khan Academy or YouTube.
The value proposition of the school has declined in their minds. It is true that students can be socialized at school, but the recent covid protocols which impose masks, cohorting, social distancing diminish the value proposition of schools as a place for socializatio. It is true that schools pass on values to students, but in an increasingly politicized and socially divided country we are more likely to see parents being more selective in the value system that the schools pass onto their kids.?
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In conclusion, increased mobility, increased lack of student body cohesion, increase in homeschooling options, and job changes for parents may have us see the start of : “The Great School Resignation”. In order to counter this, private schools and public schools alike will need to create dedicated teams to reignite the value proposition in their school.
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