During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a staggering number of students went "missing." Kindergarten enrollment rates dropped, and students already enrolled in classes failed to log in for online learning.
From March to October 2020, the education nonprofit Bellwether estimated, as many as 3 million students nationwide went missing from classrooms. Another estimate from FutureEd, an education think tank, found a sevenfold increase in the number of students missing at least half a school year during the pandemic.
