And this has provided that, unfortunately,” Sandy Addis, chairman of the National Dropout Prevention Center, said recently, referring to the pandemic. His group believes the dropout rate has spiked this year and will remain high for years. At one high school in Kansas City, Kansas, staff members have made thousands of calls to the families of at-risk students, said Troy Pitsch, who supervises high school principals in the city. Among them for much of this school year was Jose Solano-Hernandez, a 17-year-old senior at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, Kansas. At Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia, the 185,000-student district saw the percentage of middle school and high school students earning F’s in at least two classes jump by 83% in the fall.

Source: ABC News May 11, 2021 11:04 UTC