A U.S. District Court judge in New York on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to cancel more than $1 billion of previously approved pandemic-era relief funding to schools across the country.

The issued by District Judge Edgardo Ramos prevents the U.S. Department of Education and its secretary, Linda McMahon, from recovering money “during the pendency of this litigation or until further order of the Court.”

Maryland had joined 15 states and the District of Columbia in the suit against the department and McMahon last month. , filed April 10, followed a letter from McMahon that arrived in email inboxes at 5 p.m. on Friday, March 28, advising state school officials that any unspent COVID-19 federal recovery funds were being reclaimed immediately.

Most of the money in Maryland comes from the American Rescue Plan’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ARP ESSER, program. McMahon wrote that it didn’t make sense for the federal goverment to be awarding COVID-19 grants “years after the COVID pandemic ended.”

Maryland officials initially estimated that as much as $418 million could be at stake, the most of any state in the lawsuit. School officials announced last week, before the meeting, that the number is actuallly closer to $232.1 million, but the injunction was still welcome.

“COVID-19 may be over, but its impact is still being felt in schools across our State and nation, as reading and math scores remain lower than pre-pandemic levels and students continue to struggle with behavioral health issues since schools reopened,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) said in a statement Tuesday.

“This ruling preserves hundreds of millions of dollars for Maryland schools, allowing our educational leaders to continue giving their students the support they need and deserve,” Brown said.

A U.S. Department of Education spokesperson did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Tuesday night.

The money is being used for various educational programs and school construction projects, ranging from tutoring and reading materials to the installation of heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems.

The lawsuit highlighted several affected projects, such as Baltimore City Public Schools’ cancellation of tutoring and after-school programs. The school system hasn’t been reimbursed $48 million.

Besides D.C. and Maryland, others in the suit were Arizona, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon and Pennsylvania.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.

High-dosage, in-person tutoring gets , recent research suggests. But as federal funding for remediation dries up and schools struggle to raise students’ post-COVID skills, educators have been hoping for a lifeline in the form of live, online tutoring.

While virtual tutors still work directly with students in real time, they can work from anywhere, expanding the potential talent pool and lowering costs.

Until recently, virtual tutoring had that it works very well, with few rigorous studies of its effectiveness. But new findings, including two recent studies from Johns Hopkins University’s , are beginning to offer a different narrative: Done well and with the same safeguards as traditional in-person tutoring, the virtual version can be nearly as good.

“I was always one of those people who was so skeptical — ‘it’s never going to work,’” said Amanda Neitzel, an assistant professor at Hopkins and the research center’s deputy director. “And then I did these studies, and I was shocked, because it did work.”

In a quasi-experimental study , Neitzel and her colleagues found that first-graders in Massachusetts who used , a one-to-one virtual tutoring program, made substantial progress in reading, with the percentage of students reading on grade level rising from just 16% in the fall to about 50% by spring.

The share of “struggling” readers also dropped, from 64% in the fall to 28% by the spring.

The study tracked about 1,900 students in 13 high-poverty Massachusetts school districts in the 2023-24 school year. The data suggest that tutored students showed nearly five-and-a-half months’ more progress on a key reading test than the typical student. And they improved across the board, with English learners, students with disabilities and low-income students all gaining ground.

Ignite tutors work with students for 15 minutes every day, typically during “literacy blocks” in class or in separate, staff-monitored rooms.

In a separate, more rigorous study , Neitzel and her colleagues found that students who got online tutoring outperformed their peers by about two points on NWEA reading assessments, a “significant” change that would raise the average student slightly to the 55th percentile in the class, or just above average.

While researchers saw no difference in impacts for English language learners or those with special needs, they found that first-graders got more out of the tutoring, meaning that the hypothetical 50th-percentile student who got tutoring would rise to the 58th percentile.

Six elementary schools in a district in Texas took part in the randomized controlled trial evaluating Air Reading for 418 first-through-sixth-grade students during the 2023-24 school year. The small-group tutoring ran for just a few months in the spring, from late January through April.

Neitzel said the effect sizes in the two new studies aren’t necessarily as large as those of the most effective in-person models, but the new evidence provides some of the most compelling evidence yet for schools wondering whether they should offer virtual tutoring. 

“It’s really exciting that every month or two there’s another out,” she said. “And there are more in the field right now too. So I think in the next couple years, we’ll be able to answer that question better.”

Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University, agreed, saying several to amount to “ on the efficacy of virtual tutoring programs,” suggesting they hold promise.

He noted that randomized control trials generally find that virtual tutoring has positive effects, but often of smaller magnitude than those found in meta-analyses of in-person tutoring programs. “However, the devil is in the specific program design details,” he said. For instance, several studies find that one-on-one virtual tutoring is more effective than programs that use small groups.

Jennifer Krajewski, director of outreach and engagement for , a clearinghouse for research-proven tutoring models housed at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Research and Reform in Education, noted that both Air Reading and Ignite Reading employ well-trained live tutors and a “highly structured” program, with ongoing coaching for tutors and a clear instructional process that addresses students’ individual needs. These characteristics, she said, are often part of in-person tutoring programs that have been found effective.

Both programs work hard at getting students to actually attend, she and Neitzel said. 

Reviewing the Ignite study, Neitzel said the percentage of students actually receiving tutoring when they were supposed to was “shockingly high,” topping 85% for the vast majority of students. That suggests implementation is key in a field where attendance isn’t always tracked very well. 

“You could have the best model in the world, but if the kids aren’t actually there, it’s not going to move the needle,” she said.

Attendance remains one of virtual tutoring’s biggest challenges, she said. “When it’s a physical person in the building, they can pull you out of class. It’s harder to avoid. Whereas if it’s on a computer, you just don’t log in — or you log off, or [you say], ‘Oh, it’s not working.’ ”

Krajewski said that for the study, Ignite worked with a local funder in Massachusetts to hire on-the-ground workers who ensured that students were showing up. It also held regular virtual meetings with educators “to make sure everyone understood the milestones and the goals,” ensuring that the program would be launched consistently across several districts. “Everyone was really on the same page because of these meetings,” she said.

Ignite and the local funder also appointed paid school and district “champions” to supervise implementation. Each school champion worked about three hours weekly to troubleshoot problems that arose. And they required that schools review student achievement data weekly, moving students out of tutoring when they succeeded and filling those seats with struggling students. 

Neitzel said one of the keys to Ignite’s success, at least in the study, was that it paired students with tutors who spoke the same language, offering “a little connection” between them, even if tutoring took place primarily in English.

If schools can’t find enough bilingual teachers locally, she said, “maybe virtual tutoring is the best option you have.” In-person tutoring programs might be slightly more effective, she said, but virtual programs offer flexibility on hiring and other challenging aspects of implementation. 

In the Air Reading study, Neitzel said, company representatives met with schools every other week, focusing closely on attendance and which students weren’t attending sessions.

On occasion, she said, Air Reading teams flew out to schools “to make sure stuff was happening and getting set up or trying to troubleshoot what’s going on. I was impressed with just how well they knew the schools they were working with.”

In one case, she recalled an Air Reading worker who was so attuned to the school he oversaw that he knew an attendance monitor’s father had died. “That’s how involved they are with this,” Neitzel said. “When it works well, there are these tremendous relationships with people in the district to make it work.”

Krajewski, who was not an author on either study, said researchers haven’t yet seen evidence of effectiveness for tutoring using AI agents working directly with students. “We’ve seen that the most effective models use human tutors,” she said. 

Hopkins researchers are working on an evaluation of an AI-assisted tutoring model developed by Carnegie Mellon University and predicted there’d be noteworthy data by the end of 2025. “But even then, it’s not that the tutoring is replaced by AI,” she said. The AI, she said, is helping human tutors be more effective.

“These studies show how important that human tutor continues to be,” she said. “We’re learning that that human tutor, virtual or in person, is driving the instructional process.” 

Correction: An earlier version of this story included graphics that mischaracterized the amount of benefit students gained from the two virtual tutoring programs.

Five-year trend data beginning in the 2020-21 school year shows traditional district public schools lost roughly 1.75 million students, while enrollment in charters grew by nearly 400,000 students. 

The figures, included in a from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, come as America’s K-12 system struggles to forge a comeback in the wake of the pandemic, beset by slow academic recovery, rising rates of absenteeism and perhaps the stickiest wicket of all, enrollment declines.

Complicating the landscape further is a major push by Republicans for the expansion of private school choice programs. In dozens of states across the country, the GOP has made significant inroads toward its goal, fueling concern among public school advocates.

“The data from this report should serve as a wake-up call to all who care about public education,” says Debbie Veney, lead author of the report and senior vice president of communications at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “We have to offer families an option they believe in, or they will leave public schools altogether.”

To be sure, the vast majority of families – 80% according to the National Center for Education Statistics – still enroll their children in the traditional district public schools for which their neighborhoods are zoned. But district public schools lost about 275,000 students last school year. And while that amounts to less than 1% of total enrollment, the sector has experienced a 4% decrease over the last five years. Meanwhile, charters experienced a 12% gain over the same time span.

Among one of the notable statistics in the report: More than 75% of states saw their charter school enrollment increase last year, as roughly the same percentage of states saw their district’s public school enrollment decrease.

“Enrollment growth of more than 80,000 new students in just one year is a clear sign that families are not waiting for the system to catch up to their needs – they are actively seeking schools that meet their children’s needs today,” said Starlee Coleman, President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. 

Indeed, since the pandemic, charters have been enrolling a larger share of students, including at least 10% of public school students in Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Washington, D.C. The rate of growth has been faster in places where there is more capacity to expand, especially in smaller states and states with new laws enacting charters and expanding or eliminating existing charter caps, such as Alabama, Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Washington and Wyoming.

Florida and Texas have posted the largest five-year gains and are responsible for 40% of all new charter students in the report. 

Notably, the report compared shifts in school-aged populations with enrollment patterns by state, allowing researchers to identify whether enrollment changes are being driven by population shifts or by a desire for different public school options. The comparison showed that in 36 out of the 43 states included in the report – 84% total – charter schools enrollment growth exceeded school-aged population growth. In contrast, every state’s district school growth underperformed population growth. 

“In a world where district schools and charter schools were doing equally well in terms of enrollment, we would see them picking up similar percentages of the school aged population in places seeing growth and similar declines for states where this population is declining,” says Veney. “We see divergent trends, however.”

When it comes to demographics, both charters and district schools are gaining Hispanic students, but charter school growth is outpacing district schools growth by 18 times. In fact, one of every three charter students in the U.S. is Hispanic. Similarly, Black student enrollment is on the rise, increasing roughly 8% at charters and 5% at district schools over the last five years. 

The big take-away for traditional school districts, however, is how significantly enrollment is down among white students: Last year, district schools lost nearly 300,000 white students, for a total of 1.4 million lost since the pandemic. Charters, however,  have increased enrollment among white students  by 21,000 over the same time period.

“The fact that the net outflow is most precipitous among white students from traditional public schools is significant. That really stuck out to me,” says Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN, an education advocacy organization that supports giving families better options through both public and private school choice. 

On the East Coast, charter schools have traditionally sprung up in urban school districts to offer low-income students of color a choice other than their often poor-performing zoned neighborhood schools, Bradford points out. But that’s not necessarily the case in other states, like Arizona and Texas, where some charter schools, like the BASIS chain, are marketing rigorous college preparatory curriculums. The diversification of their offerings, he says, is at least one major driver of their enrollment increases.

To be sure, enrollment gains and drops are not universal – where they happen, the reasons why they happen, and how acutely they happen are all unique to the school district in which they occur. And traditional district enrollment isn’t decreasing solely because of charter school expansions. Many other factors are at play, including a rise in homeschooling and expanded access in Republican-led states to education savings accounts, private school voucher programs, tax credit scholarships and other types of private school choice. 

“This is a really interesting time for charters. Charters have been a balance point between two kinds of school choice – private school choice and open enrollment,” says Bradford. “The latter I’d argue is a significantly tougher nut to crack. People are like, ‘I bought my house, I bought my school, it’s mine.’ And that’s kind of a sacred thing.”

Tracking each individual state’s child care actions during this time can prove just as dizzying, but a new resource from The Hunt Institute provides a comprehensive list of state directives all in one place and updated in real time.

Last week, the North Carolina-based nonprofit launched a , which includes a comprehensive Policy Playbook featuring issue briefs on topics from early childhood to K-12 and postsecondary education, links to state guidance, and more.

Child care is prominently featured across this resource, with both the Institute’s compendium of child care policy actions and a growing collection of briefs providing state policymakers with timely information on early childhood education during the coronavirus pandemic. The page will be continually updated throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Rather than keeping state policymakers and school superintendents insulated, The Institute’s resources aim to connect state governments by keeping them informed with the latest closures, analysis and cutting-edge initiatives.

“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback because people have really found The Institute to be a one-stop shop,” says The Hunt Institute President Javaid Siddiqi. “It’s being updated in real time. Everything in this COVID world is changing minute by minute.”

The child care resource page illustrates how state policies for early childhood care in the midst of coronavirus have run the gamut from far-reaching closures to more lenient measures. On March 26, the Maryland Department of Education announced that child care providers must close, with the exception of those serving essential personnel. In California, the first state to issue a shelter-in-place order, the Department of Social Services left the decision to close day care centers to the discretion of the licensee, unless ordered by local, state or federal authorities with emergency jurisdiction to do so. Other states have given child care facilities the option to remain open. In Louisiana, state officials issued stay-at-home orders in March but exempted childcare.

who has provided a blueprint for state governments responding to the virus. In a series of Tweets on March 15, DeWine signaled that daycares would eventually close and healthcare facilities would soon create their own daycares to fill the gaps. The Republican governor’s measured tone and slow rollout of child care closures also won praise from The Hunt Institute’s Director of Early Learning Dan Wuori.

“I would single Ohio out for a particularly orderly and thoughtful process,” Wuori said. “Governor Dewine stands out as having had a forward-thinking, organized process, where he signaled this was coming, gave parents time and gave providers time.”

On March 26, the state of Ohio closed childcare facilities unless they operate under a temporary pandemic child care license. The state further restricted child care facilities to no more than six children per class with one teacher. Those population restrictions are necessary for preschoolers who aren’t able to adhere to social distancing guidelines themselves. In addition to a trend in limiting the number of children per room, Wuori has noticed language in emergency licenses that addresses the stability of those groups.

“They don’t want kids filtering in and out of that group,” he said. “You keep kids together from the same family as much as possible.”

Ohio’s temporary license for providers mirrors similar processes across the country. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker issued a stay-at-home order on March 20, which closed child care centers except those granted an emergency license to provide care for essential staff. North Carolina followed suit on March 25, issuing guidance that must be .

“The lines are blurring between open and closed,” Wuori said, noting that several states have closed child care facilities while giving the option to apply as emergency care providers.

Many of the temporary licenses are being issued on site at hospitals and facilities where essential staff are working, he adds. States are also waiving or suspending traditional regulatory processes.

“Typically these licenses are pretty simple, at least compared to regular child care licensing,” he said. “States are offering increased flexibility for these emergency centers with the expectation that they’re open for two months or something to that effect.”

Beyond closures, The Hunt Institute is tracking other innovations in education policy brewing at the state level. New Mexico has added infected child care workers to the state’s high risk insurance pool, pledging to pay premiums for the infected worker, and their immediate household members, until they recover.

“It’s been important for the field to see child care rightfully lumped into the category of first responders,” Wuori said. “They’re such an essential part of the nation’s infrastructure right now because without them the essential staff, the medical staff responding to the pandemic, wouldn’t be able to do that job.”

Even as states attempt to keep child care facilities open for essential workers and limit the number of children per class, providers have expressed apprehension over keeping open a potential breeding ground for carriers.

“That’s why I was so interested to see what New Mexico is doing in terms of the health insurance piece of this,” Siddiqi said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that becomes a bigger part of the conversation because in some ways, it is a hazardous duty that they’re taking on. They’re providing this essential care and may be working daily with children who may not be symptomatic but may be capable of spreading the virus.”

North Carolina’s policies also caught Wuori’s eye. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services is providing several forms of financial assistance through May for facilities and their families, including bonus payments to full-time child care employees and child care homes. The department will pay providers $300 per month for teaching staff and $200 per month for all non-teaching staff. The state will also pay subsidies so that providers aren’t penalized for decreases in attendance through May.

“Lots of states are issuing payments based on the number of kids enrolled, as opposed to the number of kids physically showing up at school that week, so as to keep those important dollars flowing to the childcare centers,” Siddiqi says.

Looking ahead, Siddiqi says he’s interested in how states will choose to expend money granted to them from the federal stimulus package. to prevent child care providers from going out of business and closing their doors to parents working essential jobs during the pandemic.

“Some states clearly, like New Mexico or North Carolina, have already figured out the funding streams that are within the state’s discretion,” he says. “But now all states will have this infusion of funding through the stimulus that’s aimed to support the child care industry.”

That infusion of federal dollars may not be enough to assuage the anxiety that many small providers feel throughout the pandemic.

“To me the biggest thing that maybe we haven’t talked about yet is how this is exposing the precarious financial child care model,” Wuori said. “There’s a very serious question right now and a lot of anxiety in the child care industry about how all these small businesses will ultimately be able to weather this without significant support. There certainly will be centers that will close for this purpose that will never reopen.”