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Late last year, "The Nation's Report Card" gave us the first robust look at how students nationally have fared academically since the pandemic began. Around the same time, my home state of California released its state test scores, offering a more detailed look at the same time period. Unfortunately, neither set of results was surprising: scores dipped across the board. The data for both math and reading also showed that for students who were already shut out from opportunity, the consequences were far worse than for their more advantaged peers.
Fortunately, over the past several years, schools have received landmark levels of federal funding. At the federal level alone, elementary and secondary education received $190 billion in relief funding. For context, that's more than triple the amount K-12 education received in 2019's federal budget before we knew what was coming.
These sums are the stuff of dreams for advocates like me who have been beating the drum of greater investments in education for years. And with stakes this high, it's even more important that schools spend it on what will meet their students' needs effectively and equitably — all while maintaining transparency to help prove the impacts of funding.
Spending effectively and equitably varies by community. Just as every student has unique needs, the same is true of their communities. If schools are to ensure that every student succeeds, they must partner with and listen to those communities, including parents — especially parents of color, who are frequently left out.
Unfortunately, polling we conducted among K-12 parents across the state of California hints at a breakdown in communication, and perhaps a misalignment of spending priorities. About two in three parents didn't feel they had knowledge of how their child's school is spending COVID relief funding. When parents did have a perception of that spending, they believed that the bulk was going to prevent the spread of the virus (e.g., COVID testing and contact tracing), whereas they would have preferred schools prioritize academics (e.g., individual learning plans, tutoring, mentoring) and mental health (e.g., counseling, wellness screenings). That may be because only 57% said their child's educators understood their learning needs and only 54% said the same about mental health needs.
Clearly, when it comes to including parents in their decision-making, school districts have some work to do.
Tracking School Funds
So, are parents' guesses correct or are schools doing a better job of prioritizing what families say they need than our poll respondents thought? Here's the kicker: we largely don't know. When it comes to tracking where this once-in-a-lifetime pot of money went, as education journalist Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat puts it, "information at the state and national levels is limited, incomplete, or nonexistent, making it difficult to closely monitor this unprecedented infusion of federal cash." We'd add unhelpfully vague to that list; if a district says it's spending on tutoring, as many do, that doesn't tell us which students are getting that tutoring, in which subjects, from whom, how often, or for how long. In lieu of sufficient official data, many journalists and researchers have collected their own, attempting to trace these dollars for themselves. Many find that much of the money hasn't been spent yet. A November 2022 McKinsey study estimated that $130 billion remained unspent at the time and projected that $20 billion would remain so by the spending deadline of September 2024.
You heard that right: we don't know where billions in emergency education aid are. And it seems likely that three years into the pandemic, the majority has yet to make it into classrooms.
The hang-up seems to be at least partially bureaucratic. That same McKinsey study found that "nearly three-quarters of district administrators said they had struggled to overcome administrative hurdles to receiving funds, navigating compliance, and finalizing procurement." Extraordinary circumstances seem to have spurred a rush of extraordinary funding, but the red tape that binds district purse strings is as tight as ever.
Where Some Funds Go
Some schools are wisely trying to put their money toward teachers — if they can find them. Research dating back to 2015 shows that a talented teacher has a significant impact on a student's learning. After years of isolation, we also know that for students to recover from missed learning, they need supportive adults who can forge strong, trusting relationships. What's more, more teacher slots mean an opportunity to welcome more educators of color into the profession, a demographic of the workforce likely to improve student outcomes, especially for students of color. Based on the research, hiring skilled teachers — especially teachers of color — would be a powerful investment for districts to make with their additional funding. And yet: a pre-existing chronic teacher shortage, worsened by a pandemic-induced "teacher exodus," makes finding and recruiting the caring educators who students need difficult.
Others are rightfully considering how to spend a wealth of one-time funds to address current challenges without creating new ones down the line. This funding wasn't intended as a permanent solution; in fact, the programs come with a ticking clock to award funds, with some as soon as 60 days of receiving funds. Designing a spending plan that bolsters student success as soon as possible and can be downsized when either funding or time to spend it runs out is a tall — but not unsurmountable — order.
This lack of transparency could have ripple effects for decades to come. Advocates like The Education Trust–West have spent years demanding that we make greater investments in education because the research agrees with common sense: without financial resources, it's much harder for schools to give students what they need, especially when students bring greater needs to school with them.
These COVID relief spending packages prove that we can fund schools at a level we've needed for years — so long as the political will is there. But how will we prove that we should continue to do so without data on what schools did with it, why, and how well it worked?
Demonstrating the Need
State leaders have the power to make sure we're watching where the money goes and how well it works, and they should have started yesterday. Detailed guidance for districts and schools on evidence-based strategies to accelerate learning could help get them to get the best educational bang for their buck. And whether it's in the form of commissions, working groups, or community convenings, schools need a regular feedback loop with local students, families, educators, and community members. Those groups should reflect the student body and have meaningful power over spending decisions. And finally, we would learn so much from this moment if we had timely, accessible, reasonably specific data on both spending activity and learning outcomes. Those data would need to be articulated in user-friendly, public-facing webpages that enable disaggregation by race, gender, English learner status, disability status, and other student groups. Parents shouldn't need a statistics degree to feel confident that their child's school is spending wisely and equitably.
Emergency education funding will have an enormous impact on today's students; the data we collect about it will have an enormous impact on the generations of students who come after them.