Schools Reopen with Federal Dollars
Remedy for "Unfinished Learning" Remains Uncertain
As schools open their doors this fall, the last 18 months
of virtual education and a large population of unvaccinated
students leave educators, parents and students grappling with
how the upcoming school year might unfold.
A third-quarter 2021 analysis from McKinsey showed
that the pandemic made a forceful impact on K-12 student
learning, with students on average five months behind in
mathematics and four months behind in reading education at
the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Historically disadvantaged
and low-income students face even greater consequences
on average, with estimated impact of six to seven months of
unfinished learning. Students tested generally in the spring of
2021 were also approximately ten points behind in math and
nine points behind in reading when compared with similar
cohorts from 2017, 2018 and 2019. McKinsey further estimates
that unless unfinished learning is formally addressed at state
and district levels, today’s students could earn $49,000 to
$61,000 less over their lifetimes, amounting to a $128-billion
to $188-billion impact on the U.S. economy every year as the
“pandemic cohort” joins the workforce.
Unprecedented federal funding is available to address
critical issues of unfinished learning and associated inequities,
although beyond earmarking funds, Congress has left specific
actions up to district- and state-level policymakers. The
American Rescue Plan (ARP); Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and
Economic Security Act (CARES); and Coronavirus Response
and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSAA) have
cumulatively committed $200 billion to K-12 education in the
United States. About $122 billion of that total was earmarked
by the ARP and must be obligated by Sept. 30, 2023. This
leaves districts with little time to choose which programs to
create or personnel to hire, and it saddles them with concerns
about the financial sustainability of such programs once the
2023 deadline passes. Despite these challenges, the funding
provides an opportunity not only to tackle challenges of unfinished
learning, but also to take on achievement gaps between
students of different racial demographics and income levels.
Given that schools across the country are faced with the
daunting question of how this money should be spent, who
decides where those dollars should go? School funding through
ARP has been earmarked through the Elementary and Secondary
School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER), and Congress
has stipulated that the money is intended to “prevent, prepare
for and respond to impacts of COVID-19.” Potential solutions
for this blanket statement might include intensive tutoring, teacher professional development, increased learning time and
new programs, targeted assessments, learning interventions
and community partnerships, but these uses of funds serve
as little more than blueprints when considering real-world
solution wrangling.
ESSER stipulates that educators directly impacted by the
pandemic—such as teachers, parents, school administrators
and student health providers—must be included in the decision-making process when deciding where these funds should
go. Schools are using the funds for everything from renovated
HVAC systems, to “high dosage/low ratio” tutoring programs,
to purchasing laptops for students to better prepare for a quick
shift to remote learning. However, it remains an unanswered
question of how we can improve the education system for all
students through improved pedagogy, updated curricula,
and reimagined classroom experiences that cannot simply be
purchased, but rather that require institutions to envision and
embrace organizational change.
This very challenge brings to light that although ESSER
funding is federal in nature, the decentralized nature of the U.S.
public school system makes it difficult to implement consistent
programming across states or even districts. In terms of
how ESSER funds might be dispersed in an age of increasingly
personalized education, we will likely see an increased focus on
individual student supports that go beyond traditional classroom
interactions. Differentiated assessments, made easier by tools
such as Google’s Education Suite, enable teachers and tutors to
assign unique content to different students in the class, allowing
educators to more precisely tailor assessments to specific students’
needs – and measure their results. Teachers have harnessed the
power of video to shift some class time from traditional lecture
to more student-centric and feedback-based learning experience
design. High-dosage tutoring—or consistent in-person instruction—is another in-school support that has received attention
as an effective method of personalizing instruction for students
during the height of the pandemic. While each of these relatively
newer approaches has merit, they do not offer an all-encompassing
solution for an education system of many parts.
Schools also have the opportunity to make badly needed
infrastructure improvements. While digital transformation
has arguably led to a more personalized approach to education,
physical learning spaces in schools have been painfully
slow to update facilities to support individual student success.
Infrastructure projects might include basic improvements
to ventilation and construction, but also more sophisticated
technological improvements such as broadband remediation,
collaborative learning furniture and a bolstered digital technology
arsenal for students to use in schools and at home.
With newfound funding at our fingertips, we must start by
putting students first.
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of Spaces4Learning.