Burst in covid spending helped students recover, researchers find

But despite $190 billion sent to K-12 schools, academic achievement lagged behind pre-pandemic levels.

When Congress sent tens of billions of dollars to schools — an unprecedented sum — to battle the coronavirus pandemic, it seemed like reopening campuses was going to be the toughest thing. Or maybe keeping teachers and students covid-free. But it turns out the hardest thing was helping students recover from severe academic losses sustained during the depths of the pandemic.

Schools reopened. Students and teachers were, for the most part, kept safe from covid. But what about academic recovery? Did the money help kids get back on track?

Two new reports offer the same answer: Yes.

“There were many reasons to think the money wouldn’t have a very big effect on kids learning because it wasn’t targeted and there were lots of other needs,” said Sean Reardon, an education researcher at Stanford University and co-author of the first paper. “But in fact it did have a significant effect on learning.”

Yet it didn’t finish the job. Between 2019 and 2022, the average U.S. student lost about a half grade level in math and a third of a grade level in reading, according to test data from 30 states analyzed by researchers at Harvard and Stanford universities in the Education Recovery Scorecard project. Students made up about 30 percent of the loss in math and 20 percent of the loss in reading between spring 2022 and spring 2023. Some — though not all — of that can be traced to the federal funding, the researchers conclude. (Results of spring 2024 testing are not yet available.)

“Despite what is an unprecedented amount of money, kids are still far behind,” said Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the American Institutes for Research and the University of Washington, who co-authored the second research paper.

Why wasn’t $190 billion — the largest one-time education investment in U.S. history — enough? Among the reasons: Some of the money was spent on covid mitigation and testing, the main focus of the legislation, not academics. Not all of the money for academics was invested in the most effective strategies, because they had other priorities or perhaps were unaware of the research. Not every district got robust funding. And the losses were deep.

Fully catching kids up would require additional spending, the researchers find. The opposite is actually unfolding, with districts running out of the money already allocated. Schools are required to spend the last of the covid relief funding in the coming months, and across the country, districts are cutting staff and programs that were aimed at accelerating academic recovery.

“If the goal is having all students made whole from the pandemic, I do think that states will need to step up,” said Tom Kane, a professor of education and economics at Harvard University and co-author of the first paper, which was produced by a team of researchers from Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth universities.

Still, the gains already recorded were big enough to pay for themselves, based on how increases in academic achievement translate into higher wages in adulthood, Kane said.

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