When the pandemic shut down schools across the country, the federal government responded with billions of dollars to help districts support remote learning, serve students free meals and safely reopen schools.
In 2021, the Biden administration gave districts another $122 billion through its $1.9 trillion stimulus package, an amount that far exceeded previous rounds. The districts were required to spend at least 20 percent of those funds in helping students recover academically, while the rest could be used in general efforts to respond to the pandemic.
However, while most schools have since implemented various forms of intervention and some have spent more on academic recovery than others, there are many signs that the money has not been spent in a way that has substantially helped all students. backward students in the country.
Recent test scores underscore the staggering effect of the pandemic, which has pushed much of the nation’s students into remote learning for extended periods. Students in most states and in nearly every demographic group experienced major setbacks in math and reading after many schools closed their doors. In 2022, math scores suffered the largest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which has assessed a large sample of fourth- and eighth-grade students since the early 1990s.
Researchers and education advocates say recovering from the effects of remote learning should be the top priority, but it’s unclear how much of the funding is helping students across the country fully catch up.
Plans for relief funds have varied across the country. Some districts have invested more in extend learning time or offer intensive small group tutoring focused on math or English, which Research has shown be among the most powerful interventions. Others have spent much of their funds on facility improvements, online tutoring services, general bonuses for employees and other measures that education experts have argued are less effective in helping students catch up.
National data on how the money has been spent is sparse. The federal government does limited follow-up of the relief funds, which were sent directly to the states. Many states, which distribute the money to districts, do not provide detailed breakdowns of spending.
Some education experts who have closely monitored the aid money said federal guidelines should have focused more on addressing learning loss and were skeptical many districts’ recovery plans were robust enough. Although the schools were initially slow to spend moneynow they are on track to exhaust funding before the September 2024 deadline to budget the money.
Robin Lake, director of the Center for the Reinvention of Public Education, said the impact of the funding has been a “little black box” and she expected to see different recovery rates across districts. Ms. Lake said that giving general bonuses, completing maintenance projects, and plugging holes in budgets they were less effective interventions.
“I think in some districts we will see the money well spent,” Ms. Lake said. “And in many, perhaps most, it will not have been spent as well as it should have been, in terms of addressing the urgent need before us.”
He pointed to data showing that many students still don’t have access to the kind of intensive tutoring programs that have been shown to be effective, with demonstrated great positive effects on performance in mathematics and reading.
TO federal survey conducted in December found that most public schools offered some form of tutoring, but only 37 percent gave students more intensive “high-dose” tutoring, which is usually done in smaller groups, lasts at least 30 minutes and includes at least three sessions per day. week. Of all public schools, only 10 percent of students participated in that type of tutoring.
Early reports show that schools have struggled to establish academic recovery programs. A recent article from the Center for Educational Policy Research at Harvard University found that schools struggled last year to carry out recovery programs on the scale envisioned due to staff shortages and lower student participation. The researchers, who sampled 12 districts, found that some of the estimated effects were positive, but even if the programs were fully established, they still wouldn’t be enough to help all students catch up by 2024.
Thomas Kane, director of the center’s faculty and co-author of the papers, said implementation has improved since then, but remains well below the levels needed. He expected to see some progress this year, but said a “significant gap” will remain, as not enough schools are extending the academic year or placing most students in summer school.
“Each district can describe how they are spending the money,” Mr. Kane said. “But few, if any, districts have a recovery plan that is specifically tailored to the losses of their students.”
Education Department officials said they were confident much of the stimulus money would be spent on academic recovery.
“Continued technical assistance from the department and communication with states indicate that investments in academic recovery, staffing, and student mental health comprise the majority of local spending,” Adam Schott, deputy assistant secretary, said in a statement.
Sasha Pudelski, director of AASA, the Association of School Superintendents, said districts were prioritizing spending on extra learning time. According to data from July AASA68 percent of districts were spending some funds on expanded summer learning, 42 percent were adding learning time by compensating staff, and 39 percent were providing high-intensity tutoring.
In Tennessee, 87 districts are participating in A program which provides matching grants using federal dollars to districts that offer small group tutoring in reading or math.
One of the participating districts, Elizabethton City Schools, hired 14 full-time staff members to provide English language arts tutoring to 404 elementary and secondary students this year. Students attended sessions during the school day twice a week for 45 minutes each.
Myra Newman, assistant director of schools for academics, said the district was spending 56 percent of its $5.6 million in recovery aid funds. The district has already seen significant gains: In 2022, 45.6% of students in grades three through eight were proficient in English, up from 33.9% in 2021 and 43% in 2019.
“Most of our money went to students and closing the gap in learning loss,” Ms. Newman said.
Other districts have spent more relief funds on facility improvements. Researchers at Georgetown University’s Economics Lab estimate that a quarter of the latest round of relief funds would be spent on facilities.
Oregon’s Klamath County School District plans to use about 30 percent of its $16.1 million federal share on academic remediation programs and 70 percent on facilities projects. These include the purchase of new turf fields, replacement of HVAC systems, improvement of flooring, renovation of bleachers at baseball fields, construction of a gymnasium, and paving of an elementary school parking lot.
Glen Szymoniak, the district’s superintendent, said the projects would help improve student safety and well-being. Some bleachers had “spike nails” and boards that were cracking. Without a new turf field, some students would not have a place to play during recess and one of the soccer teams would need to travel half an hour to practice. Officials chose not to spend the funds on staffing because the money would eventually run out.
“We would have to fire them in three or four years,” Szymoniak said. “It’s not a way to treat people.”
Instead, officials leveraged millions in annual state funding to hire reading specialists, add counselors and expand small-group and project-based instruction, which Szymoniak says has already led to improved math proficiency among high school students. primary this year, according to the first evaluations. Last year, 36 percent of third grade students met state grade level expectations in English, up from 42 percent in 2019.
The Wisconsin Cudahy School District is spending about 80 percent of its $4.7 million in relief funds on facilities improvements and 20 percent on academic recovery, which includes professional development for staff members and the employment of literacy specialists. . Among third-grade students in the district, 29.8 percent were proficient in reading in 2022, up from 23.6 percent in 2021 and down from 35.9 percent in 2019.
Tina Owen-Moore, the district’s superintendent, said officials were concerned about maintaining salaries, so they spent more on upgrading HVAC systems and remodeling classrooms to allow for social distancing.
“If we just did a high dose of tutoring while we had those funds in there, as soon as those funds are gone, we wouldn’t be able to continue to support students,” Ms Owen-Moore said.
Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab, said some facility projects, like new HVAC systems, were reasonable, but others, like parking lot renovations, wouldn’t do much to help students catch up.
Although he said he wanted to see improvement in academic recovery efforts, he didn’t expect many districts to revise their plans. With the funding deadline looming and sharp enrollment declines expected to hurt some districts’ budgets, he said officials were more focused on preventing school closings and mass layoffs.
“Pretty quickly, they’re starting to panic,” Ms. Roza said. “There is less and less energy on how to take advantage of these limited dollars.”