Relief funds eased COVID learning loss but could have done more

Pandemic K-12 public school closings disrupted learning nationwide, with the average student in grades 3 through 8 losing the equivalent of half a grade level in math achievement and a third of a grade level in reading achievement. 

The federal government’s response was a K-12 financial relief package of three bills for states and districts totaling $190 billion. The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief package was the largest one-time federal investment in K-12 schools, with a Sept. 30 deadline to commit funds for specific uses.  

Are the relief dollars making a difference in the learning loss recovery effort? There is good and bad news as students and teachers return to school. 

The good news is that these funds are having a positive effect on helping students catch up. The bad news is they are insufficient to return all students to pre-pandemic learning levels. Additionally, we don’t know which newly funded programs helped students catch up.       

Two independent reports, the Harvard and Stanford-led Education Recovery Scorecard and a report by the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, examine the relationship between learning loss recovery and the relief packages. 

Both reports use the Stanford University Education Data Archive to analyze 2022-2023 math and reading test scores for grades 3 to 8 students from more than 5,000 districts in 30 states. 

Using different research methods, they reached a similar conclusion: Federal dollars did accelerate academic recovery. 

According to the Scorecard, every $1,000 received for a student typically added about six days of learning progress in math and three days in reading. These academic gains per dollar are akin to what other researchers have found for the effects of general revenue increases in school spending for improving test scores. 

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