WHERE HAVE ALL THE CHILDREN GONE? Where are they now? Urban public schools see steep fall in enrollment.

One third of students in mostly black districts are not in traditional public schools, Barshay notes. Students in high-poverty districts also are more likely to “lost” to their neighborhood schools.

Some of the missing students enrolled in charter schools, which saw their share of enrollment rise from 5 percent to 6 percent. “Virtual” schools’ share rose form 0.7 percent to 1.2 percent. As vouchers expand, private schools may begin growing too, but there’s not much evidence of that yet.

“Roughly 6 percent of students in the United States, or somewhere between 3 and 4 million, choose homeschooling — and that number seems to be growing,” write homeschooling advocates Angela R. Watson and Matthew H. Lee in Education Next.

I suspect many homeschoolers and microschoolers are flying under the radar, and don’t show up in official statistics.

Let’s hope they stay under the radar, where “helpful” busybodies won’t notice them.