In a USA Today/Ipsos poll, 60 percent of parents said they will likely choose at-home learning this fall rather than send their children to school even if the schools reopen. Thirty percent said they were “very likely” to keep their children home.
That seems high to me. Still, after having the kids home for months, it seems many are onsidering keeping them there.
For many parents, it’s not the virus they are avoiding by keeping their children home—it’s the response to the virus, Kerry McDonald writes. Guidelines from the CDC would make school a horrible experience. It may also be that many parents don't have jobs waiting for them to return.
There's another, and stronger, reason to teach your kids at home if you can. David Harsanyi writes:
It’s likely that left-wing ideologues run your school district. They decide what your children learn. They are the ones who decide that your kid can protest the Second Amendment of the Constitution, but never, not in a million years, march for any cause the Founders might have championed. It was one thing when these schools were producing mere Democrats, and it’s quite another now that they’re churning out hordes of chillingly ignorant voters.
The challenge as I see it is that so many parents of school-age children are holding down two jobs. At least they were before the virus. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:The labor force participation rate—the percent of the population working or looking for work—for all women with children under age 18 was 72.3 percent in 2019, up from 71.5 percent in the prior year. Married mothers remained less likely to participate in the labor force, at 69.9 percent, than mothers with other marital statuses, at 77.6 percent.
Many are speculating that people will end up working from home permanently. Perhaps it will then be easier to keep the kids at home, maybe working out joint teaching arrangements with ohter parents. We'll see.