TechGuruindia
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What difference did $190 billion make for student success coming out of the COVID-19 health crisis?
Not as much as you might think.
An by Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University found some puzzling instances where funneling more money into a pandemic-worsened problem didn’t help schools recover.
The data ultimately points to no “silver bullet” in spending aimed at improving students’ academic performance since the pandemic, says Marguerite Roza, director of Edunomics Lab.
A crunch of the numbers found that states varied widely when it came to the return on investment of their ESSER dollars. Both reading and math scores increased in districts in states like Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee, where the rate of ESSER spending per student was relatively high (over $1,000) from 2022 to 2023.
States like Nevada, California and South Dakota were also high spenders, but they saw some of the lowest gains in reading and math during the same time period.
Analysts said the difference likely came down to leadership in some states being “simply more effective at steering districts to focus on student learning” in the face of vague spending guidelines from the federal government. Leaders in Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee focused on setting clear goals and checking progress for reading and math performance.
Each chart shows the ESSER funds each district spent per student during the 2022-23 school year compared to the average years of learning gains or losses in reading and math. Source: Edunomics Lab.
Not as much as you might think.
An by Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University found some puzzling instances where funneling more money into a pandemic-worsened problem didn’t help schools recover.
The data ultimately points to no “silver bullet” in spending aimed at improving students’ academic performance since the pandemic, says Marguerite Roza, director of Edunomics Lab.
Return on Investment
A crunch of the numbers found that states varied widely when it came to the return on investment of their ESSER dollars. Both reading and math scores increased in districts in states like Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee, where the rate of ESSER spending per student was relatively high (over $1,000) from 2022 to 2023.
States like Nevada, California and South Dakota were also high spenders, but they saw some of the lowest gains in reading and math during the same time period.
Analysts said the difference likely came down to leadership in some states being “simply more effective at steering districts to focus on student learning” in the face of vague spending guidelines from the federal government. Leaders in Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee focused on setting clear goals and checking progress for reading and math performance.
Each chart shows the ESSER funds each district spent per student during the 2022-23 school year compared to the average years of learning gains or losses in reading and math. Source: Edunomics Lab.