Albert Mohler, a evangelical theologian and president of theSouthern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, has made a commentary about the hundreds of thousands of students who have left public schools in the last two years, alleging that this is in part of their parents' opposition to what schools are teaching their kids.
Mohler added that parents are "fed up" and are now causing a "seismic change" in the American educational landscape, causing public school enrollment rates to drop.
As per researchers at ReturntoLearnTracker.net found that according to data, 1,268,000 students have left public schools since the COVID pandemic broke out in 2020, causing enrollment rates to fall 2.5% in the fall of that year without recovering. States that kept schools closed for longer saw the most significant decreases in public school enrollment. The New York Times, which reported on this data, suggested several theories for the decline in public school enrollment, including parents looking for alternatives to public schools that required students to wear masks or waited too long to re-open.
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Prominent Theologian Offers a Different Explanation for Public School Enrollment Rates Dropping
Mohler, however, has a different idea for why public school enrollment is down by 1.2 million. The theologian argued that one of the reasons why there is a dramatic decrease in public school enrollment rates is that "increasingly parents - if they understand what's being taught in so many public school systems - are saying, 'That's not going to be taught to my kids.'"
According to the Christian Headlines, Mohler explained in his podcast titled "The Briefing" that while he does not deny that there are "other issues" like "parents just fed up with remote learning," one thing rings true, and that is that there is a "seismic change in the entire educational landscape when it comes to the education of children in the United States."
"I think Christians understand all these headlines remind us there's a lot more at stake here than many would recognize," Mohler remarked. The theologian also pointed to a new Oregon law that requires menstrual products to be placed in boys' restrooms. He said that Christian parents are finding out about things like this and finding "a very good reason" to take their kids out of public schools and either homeschool them or enroll them in private institutions.
Exodus from Public Schools Has Been Happening Before the Pandemic
The NYTimes claimed that there already was a "broad decline" in public school enrollment in the last years due to a drop in rates of birth and immigration, specifically in cities. However, the advent of the COVID pandemic had "supercharged" the decrease that experts believed would not "easily be reversed." There are currently about 50 million students in the U.S. public school system.
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