Armed with $190 billion in COVID-19 recovery funds from the federal government, nearly every state spent at least some of it on tutoring, with more than half adopting standards to ensure districts and schools used high-dosage, high-quality programs. During the 2022-23 school year alone, of federal pandemic aid on tutoring, on top of an estimated spent by districts on such efforts. 

Five years after the pandemic dramatically disrupted learning, with the federal aid now spent, America’s education system is still struggling to regain lost ground. The latest reveal persistent academic gaps, underscoring the urgent need for effective interventions.

Amid all the setbacks, tutoring has broken through as one of the few recovery strategies that states and districts are strategically embedding into their budgets—expanding, refining, and solidifying programs that, in some cases, have delivered significant gains in student achievement. 

Even in these politically divisive times, there’s one thing we can all agree on: Every student deserves the opportunity to build foundational skills in reading, writing, and math that will serve them through life. With nearly $1 trillion spent on education each year, we must ensure that investment translates into real educational opportunities that lead to good jobs and meaningful lives. 

High-dosage tutoring delivered during the school day from a consistent, well-trained tutor is the . In Rapid City, South Dakota, a group of retired teachers come to Title I schools each day to work as tutors, one-on-one with predominantly indigenous students. In Harrison, Colorado, paraprofessionals tutor students — and become so inspired by the academic success that they become full-time teachers themselves through innovative educator apprenticeship models. In Springfield, Ohio, aspiring teachers tutor local elementary school students building their skills while shoring up those of their students.

Over the past two decades, our organizations have dedicated significant resources to studying, supporting, and scaling this approach. Not only are we optimistic about what we are seeing, but we are firmly convinced that school systems, policymakers, and philanthropic leaders must double down on their commitment and investment to this transformative work.

This belief is driven by significant progress and success across several key areas: continued on tutoring outcomes; from parents and teachers and schools; viable paths to affordable delivery at scale; new models that solve of time, people, and money; better understanding of policies and data systems that improve tutoring delivery; and a with the potential for significant breakthroughs.  

High-dosage tutoring is uniquely effective in helping students learn, including when implemented at scale. A by University of Virginia researcher Beth Schueler, along with Brown University’s Matthew A. Kraft and Grace T. Falken, analyzed 282 randomized control trials and found that large-scale tutoring programs yield months of additional student learning per year, though effectiveness diminished as programs scale beyond 1,000 students. Yet even large-scale tutoring results were stronger than educational interventions like summer school, class size reduction, and extended school days. Additionally, of continue to find , even in challenging learning conditions. 

Importantly, schools and parents want more tutoring in their schools. The most of school leaders found that high-dosage tutoring implementation increased again last year, growing from 39% of schools in 2022-23 to 46% of schools in 2023-24. This is not just a fleeting post-pandemic trend — schools are investing in tutoring even as federal relief funding winds down, because tutoring is wildly popular with parents. In Louisiana, high-dosage tutoring outperformed every other education policy polled, with an astonishing 90% approval. 

Despite our prevailing partisan politics, the push for more tutoring comes from red and blue states, from city systems and rural counties – with whether tutoring is the next big bipartisan school reform. 

Arkansas passed regulations outlining the characteristics of quality tutoring and requiring student-level reporting of delivery so that the state can manage implementation, elevate best practices, and support struggling schools. Baltimore City Public Schools is currently tutoring over 10,000 students through partnerships with external tutoring providers and a district-run program using paraprofessionals. 

Pitt County, North Carolina partnered with to provide critical tutors to multilingual learners, using technology to deliver services in students’ native languages, including even American Sign Language, in rural schools. And New Mexico is expanding virtual middle school math tutoring statewide, breaking down barriers to access for students in rural areas. 

Federal pandemic aid may be gone, but state appropriators are putting money where they’re seeing progress: Virginia added for academic recovery, with on high-dosage tutoring for its students who are furthest behind academically. Maryland stood up a $28 million middle school math tutoring program for underserved students. And in state funds last year for intensive tutoring.

Finally, we are at the very beginning of a wave of innovation fueled by emerging technologies like AI. Innovation through has helped of tutoring as well as . The months of learning from past studies will soon come from without losing the ability to personalize tutoring sessions, support tutoring quality, and maintain program effectiveness in student learning. 

Collectively, our organizations, and other like-minded organizations such as the National Student Support Accelerator and Saga Education, have supported tutoring delivery to hundreds of thousands of students, have launched and published dozens of studies on tutoring, and have infused tens of millions of dollars into the space to spur innovation and capture learning. But we still have more work to do. 

Five years after the pandemic began, students remain behind where they should be, and the gaps between Black and Latino students and their peers are . Federal relief funding that allowed districts to try new things has run out. And yet the evidence has never been clearer: High-dosage tutoring works and can help millions of students. But without action, this critical intervention risks being lost to politics, budget cuts and inertia. There is with continued investment in high-dosage tutoring. 

We must double down on evidence-based strategies, reject fatalism, and embrace the urgency of this moment. The latest NAEP scores confirm what’s at stake. States, districts, and funders must step up to ensure that every student who needs tutoring gets it. This isn’t just an investment in students – it’s an investment in our country’s future.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provide financial support to Accelerate and ����Ӱ��.

Washington school districts received over $2.6 billion in federal COVID relief funds and have spent $2.5 billion so far, according to from the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Like all other states, Washington received funds through three packages, known as ESSER I, II and III. ESSER stands for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, and the combined total for schools nationwide is nearly $200 billion.

The deadline for districts to determine how to spend the last of the money passed on Sept. 24, but districts do not have to actually spend the funds until Nov. 15. Washington is No. 1 in the country for spend-down rates, said Katy Payne, spokesperson for the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

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“While most other states are seeking extensions from the federal government to spend the funds past the deadline…we have been clear with our districts to spend their funds down in a timely manner, and they have,” Payne said in an email.

Most states working with districts to request extensions are directing money toward facility costs, which aren’t necessarily important for helping kids recover from COVID learning loss, said Marguerite Roza, who heads Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, a research center focused on education finance.

“I’m not sure that would have made a big difference either way,” Roza said.

The Washington school districts that received the most funding overall include Seattle, Spokane and Tacoma public schools. However, the districts that received the most funding when broken down by dollars per student include Tukwila, Yakima and Highline, according to a

That’s because the funds were allocated using a formula intended to prioritize those with large low-income populations. Some districts, as a result, received nothing at all. The state also received ESSER funds — about an additional $279.5 million. That money went to learning recovery, student mental health, promote student reengagement and recruitment and retention of teachers with diverse backgrounds.

Roza said that Washington could have done a better job using ESSER funds for learning recovery. Other states, she said, pushed harder to ensure funds went to math and reading recovery, whereas Washington officials directed districts to focus on sustaining current operations and backfilling budget gaps, in part to ensure school staff didn’t lose their jobs.

“You saw state ed chiefs [outside Washington] really carefully scrutinize every plan that a district submitted and send some back and say, ‘No, I’d rather see you do more for your low achievers or your English language learners,’” Roza said.

Washington districts spent the majority of their ESSER dollars on the category of “teaching,” which would include expenses like hiring teacher’s aides, extending contracts for teachers, and afterschool programming staff.

“It was a missed opportunity to not try to leverage the ESSER funds to get kids back on track in math and reading,” Roza said, adding that that states that were more aggressive on reading recovery, in particular, are “already fully recovered from their COVID losses.”

The idea behind using funding to maintain current operations, said Ben Rarick, director of finance and operations at Tumwater School District, was to keep school systems intact with the assumption that enrollment would return to pre-pandemic numbers once schools reopened.

“A lot of districts used money to maintain programs so they’d be ready for that day,” Rarick said.

Enrollment never fully rebounded for many districts. With the focus on sustaining operations, Rarick said some districts with deeper pockets may have been able to use funds to focus on academic programs, like his district, whereas others may have had to use “every last dollar of ESSER money just to keep the staff they had.”

“I think that districts made a very good faith effort to implement high value programs for kids,” Rarick said. “I don’t place the blame on OSPI, I don’t place the blame on any individual district. It was really very specific to the circumstances of every district.”

The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction said that maintaining staff and programming was part of supporting students.

“You aren’t able to eliminate a teaching position because you had four students unenroll,” Payne said in an email. “You still need the teacher, the supplies, the support staff, the principal, the school bus.”

Payne also pointed out that Washington received less money than other states, which meant the funds “simply weren’t a big game-changer like they were in southern states.”

“That’s why it’s tough to make assumptions or assertions about how districts could have spent their funds ‘better,’” Payne said.

“How is it not focusing on academic recovery and acceleration to hire more [paraeducators] (who often lead tutoring programs in schools), start new before and afterschool learning programs, extend teachers’ working hours to support more students, and more?” Payne added.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Washington State Standard maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Bill Lucia for questions: info@washingtonstatestandard.com. Follow Washington State Standard on and .

More than childcare providers across every county of New York were  of the  of federal dollars that President Joe Biden’s  injected into the industry. Childcare providers reported using the money to cover rent or pay worker wages, sustaining care for about 676,000 kids in the state.

“That helped us keep the doors open,” said Victor Vargas, a former teacher who operates a daycare out of his home in the South Bronx. His daycare, which has eight staff, benefitted from stabilization grants from the federal government as well as a workforce retention grant that the state set up using federal funds.

But the federal money ran out last September, leaving providers struggling with increasingly thin margins between their expenses and what parents can afford or state childcare subsidies will cover. Over the past year, 44 percent of New York childcare providers have raised tuition, and a third have lost staff, according to a new  from The Century Foundation, a liberal think tank, based on surveys and federal data.

New York has increased its own investment in the childcare sector in recent years, largely in the form of  to parents and tax credits to providers, but lawmakers and advocates have called for more funding — especially to increase the wages of the industry’s poorly paid workforce. 

This year, New York childcare workers are seeing a pay cut after the state budget delivered a lower wage boost to the industry than last year.

“The sector is completely flailing right now,” said state Senator Jabari Brisport, who chairs the chamber’s Committee on Children and Families and  that the state fund universal childcare.

Twelve percent of New York childcare workers live below the federal poverty level, compared to 5 percent of all workers in the state. The industry’s median wage is , making for some of the lowest paid workers in the state.

“You expect us to be able to hire staff, keep them here, and have them want to be here — because they’re getting what exactly as a reward? It’s not money,” said Vargas, “because we can’t compete with anyone else. It’s hard for us to be able to stay in the market.”

The industry was already shedding workers when the federal funding cliff hit. According to The Century Foundation’s analysis of federal , employment in New York’s childcare industry fell by 32 percent between 2019 and 2023. (That data excludes preschool teachers and teaching assistants.)

“In other sectors, like retail and food services, wages have gone up,” said Julie Kashen, the director for women’s economic justice at The Century Foundation and the report’s lead author. “Even if they train, and love working with children, people can make more money selling coffee, so they are leaving the childcare sector to do that. That means that eventually programs are going to shut down.”

The Century Foundation had previously warned that the September 2023 funding cutoff could lead 70,000 programs to close across the country. Some congressional Democrats and the White House pushed for a  of childcare funding to stave off the crisis, but it did not garner the votes to pass.

One year after the cutoff, the most scenarios haven’t yet come to pass, the think tank acknowledged in the report published Wednesday. But states are seeing a “downward spiral,” with providers raising prices in order to stay open and struggling to find or retain workers.

Governor Kathy Hochul, who dubs herself the state’s “first mom governor,” has called affordable childcare a key priority. In 2022, she  the state to spend $7 billion on childcare over the four years of her term.

“As a mother forced to leave her job because of the lack of accessible childcare, I am proud of the work we have done with Majority Leader Stewart-Cousins and Speaker Heastie to make this historic investment and the opportunities it will provide for working parents,” Hochul said at the time.

That pledge was “significant and welcome,” said Dede Hill, the director of policy for the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy. Thanks to recent expansions of the program, more than half of children in New York are now eligible for the childcare subsidies — though  actually receive them.

“Unfortunately, there is a real danger that the state’s failure to invest in the workforce is going to threaten the success of all of these other historic investments on the side of childcare assistance,” said Hill. “You can expand eligibility for tens of thousands of families, as the state has done, but that means nothing to a family if they can’t find a spot for their child in a program because there are not enough workers.”

Statewide, the number of slots that childcare providers are approved to offer is  as it was in 2021. Some parts of the state, especially poorer and rural areas, have lost capacity, while others have seen an increase. But many providers are operating below their capacity. In a March 2023 , 1,600 providers reported that they had nearly 30,000 licensed slots they couldn’t fill due to staffing shortages.

In 2023, Hochul and the state legislature agreed to spend $500 million in discretionary federal pandemic relief funds to provide  of up to $3,000 to 110,000 child care workers across the state. This spring, Hochul and lawmakers allocated the unspent remaining portion of those funds for a smaller bonus.

According to the governor’s office, more than 80,000 childcare workers received a combined bonus of more than $5,000 over the past two years. “We’re committed to strengthening child care programs, growing the workforce and continuing to expand access affordable child care for New Yorkers,” the office said in a statement.

Advocates had called on the state to invest its own money in the workforce and set up a $2 billion “Child Care Compensation Fund” in this year’s state budget.

The proposal was modeled after a similar program in Washington, dc, that provided $12,000 supplements to childcare worker salaries. A Cornell University  found that it would cost nearly $800 million to bring childcare workers to a minimum wage of $23.55 an hour — the median entry-level wage for preschool and kindergarten teachers in New York.

Both the Senate and the Assembly budget proposals included a smaller version of the fund in the budget, but Hochul rejected it outright.

“She was completely unwilling to commit new state dollars to fund this proposal. She was solely focused on finding ways to recycle the federal money and leave it at that,” said Brisport.

This story originally appeared in New York Focus, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their

COLUMBIA – Fewer families in South Carolina will receive help covering the cost of child care as federal COVID-19 aid dries up and the state replaces just a quarter of that lost funding.

For about three years, amid the global coronavirus pandemic, the federal government raised income limits, making more parents eligible for federal dollars to pay for child care. But the last of that aid ends in about nine weeks.

State legislators agreed to put several million in state taxes toward the program, but not enough to cover all the parents newly helped by the expanded rules.

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About 2,250 children will no longer qualify for child care scholarships, based on data provided by Department of Social Services spokeswoman Connelly-Anne Ragley.

Those scholarships cover most, if not all, of annual daycare costs through direct payments to eligible child care providers for every child whose parents’ income qualifies.

Before October 2020, working parents qualified for the federally funded daycare aid if their pay equaled 85% or less of the state median income. In South Carolina, that meant at or below $64,063 for a family of three.

But for those applying between October 2020 and September 2023, their income had to fall below 300% of the federal poverty level, or $74,580 or less for that same family of three.

DSS estimated it would take $10 million to continue covering child care expenses for 3,000 children under the expanded eligibility rules, and agency Director Michael Leach asked for that amount in his budget request to lawmakers.

Gov. Henry McMaster, , recommended $5 million instead.

In the end, legislators agreed to put $2.5 million toward the scholarships in the budget that started July 1.

Based on data provided by Social Services, that’s enough to cover aid for 750 of those 3,000 children.

“A lot of families were very upset because they … grew accustomed to having this benefit,” Ragley said when parents were informed last fall that the money was expiring.

When the one-year scholarships dry up depends on when parents applied. Some families’ aid may have already ended. Last September marked the end of the expanded eligibility rules. So, the final daycare payments for scholarships awarded in September 2023 will be the end of this September.

Martha Strickland leads First Steps, which oversees private providers in the state’s for poor 4-year-olds. Parents with 4-year-olds in private preschool can also get scholarships for child care to cover the rest of their workday, both for their up to 12 years old. Strickland said she knows what a godsend the aid can be for families.

She talked about one mother who cried on the phone after finding out she qualified for free child care for her children, calling it “a miracle” for her family.

While DSS didn’t get the $10 million it requested, the agency is glad it got some money to disperse. The agency is still determining the new eligibility parameters for how to distribute it, Ragley said.

“We know the need of families to receive help paying for child care is great,” she said.

Between October 2020 and July 2023, the agency granted more than 71,200 52-week scholarships for children of parents whose income fell in the expanded eligibility levels. That total number includes children counted multiple times if they received child care aid year after year, Ragley said.

How much each scholarship is worth depends on the age of the child and how highly a child care center is rated.

For a child care center to accept children under scholarships, they have to volunteer to be part of the state’s ABC Quality Program and meet health and safety standards beyond state minimum requirements, such as background checks for all staff members.

Ragley said this gives parents a sense of security when having to leave their children in the care of others while they go to work or attend school.

As a working mother herself, Ragley said she and her husband have to scramble when they don’t have child care. Luckily, they have paid time off of work they can use.

“Not everybody has that luxury or family who can step in and help,” she said.

The rising cost of child care may also mean a parent ultimately chooses to stay home and out of the workforce, Ragley added.

“Because by the time they pay the cost of child care out of the salary they make, they either break even or the margin is small,” she said. “That is a population that, if they had access to affordable child care, could be additional workers that could fill the jobs that are open in the state.”

Ragley said the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on long-standing child care issues in South Carolina and nationwide.

The agency knows it will need more funding for its programs in the next state budget and beyond.

Its budget request will likely again include money for child care scholarships, as well as wage bonuses to encourage more people to enter the child care industry, startup grants for new centers and tax incentives for employers that offer child care as a benefit to their workers.

Ragley pointed to Georgia as an example, where businesses that provide or sponsor child care for employees are eligible for a state tax credit offsetting up to 75% of the cost.

The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce advocated for legislators to update South Carolina’s own long-standing but little-used tax break offered to employers that start or operate child care for workers or provide direct payments for private options. But the issue ultimately was not taken up.

Maine is subsidizing child care for those making up to 125% of the state median income, according to the Center for American Progress based in Washington, D.C.

Michigan is extending its COVID-19 relief policy, offering subsidies at 200% of the federal poverty level.

Minnesota is putting an additional $252 million this fiscal year into its scholarship program and promises to add $58.9 million more in the following budget year. And Montana is expanding child care subsidy eligibility up to 185% of the federal poverty level, according to the center.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

Strangely, the subject of revenues and expenditures is never addressed in A Nation at Risk (ANAR). That omission makes the cascade of calls to increase funding for schools, often justified by reference to the message of urgency in ANAR while disregarding use of funds, ironic. By ignoring the role of funding and budgeting, the recommendations from the US National Commission on Excellence in Education are untethered from any grounding in choices and trade-offs that all public policy required. On the other side, the calls for funding that are divorced from ideas of how the funds are to be used are equally problematic.

Spending on schools is frequently used as a summary statistic of the quality of schools. And in discussions of how to make schools better and more equitable, the first order of business is frequently the necessity of increasing our investment in schools—in other words, our spending on schools. Unfortunately, history has not been very supportive of this strategy.

A conventional perspective is that legislatures and school districts should decide how much to spend based on the trade-off between the expected benefits of school spending and the taxes required for any given revenue. Once the revenue is determined, school districts would make budget allocations in order to produce the best student outcomes.

However, this picture is complicated in the case of schools, since states—which have primary responsibility for schools—are concerned not only with overall student outcomes but also with the equity of public provision. Two factors enter into the equity discussions. First, education is not entirely a function of schools but has components of families and circumstances that enter into student outcomes. Thus, children from more educationally disadvantaged households, English language learners, and children with various handicaps need more from the schools if they are to pull even with students not facing such difficulties. Second, because local funding is heavily reliant on local property taxes, the size of the district tax base will directly influence the ability of a school district to raise revenues. Students who happen to reside in districts where the value of residential property and the presence of commercial and industrial properties are high have an advantage in raising revenues for their schools.

The legislature in each state is charged with making political decisions about both the level of spending and how statewide education and funding differences are addressed. How to reach decisions that weigh the underlying trade-offs is vigorously debated, and every state has its own solution to this.

Legislatures are not the only actors in these discussions. Various parties who have not liked the legislative outcomes have gone to the courts to try to change the legislative decisions. Starting in California in 1968, courts in all but two states (Hawaii and Utah) have had litigation about school funding. The early cases in the 1970s and 1980s focused on equity issues largely related to differences in property tax bases and spending differentials across school districts, but the cases evolved throughout subsequent decades to focus more on the overall adequacy of funding to meet educational objectives.

The largest difficulty with the pattern and outcomes of revenue decisions is, however, the lack of a clear relationship between added spending and student outcomes. In simplest terms, the division of decisions between how much to spend and how to spend it has historically led to highly variable and quite disappointing results in terms of student outcomes. Specifically, it appears that how funds are spent is crucial—and generally more important than how much is spent. This does not say that more resources are never important for student outcomes. Nor does it say that more resources cannot be important for improved student outcomes. It does say that divorcing decisions on “how much” from “how” has not been successful within the current structure of school decision-making.

This chapter documents these overall conclusions. It then discusses alternative perspectives on funding for schools.

A short history of funding

In order to frame the school finance discussion, it is helpful to describe briefly the nature of financing of schools in the United States. The overall picture of enrollments, structure of the schools, and funding shows significant changes over time. Further, the aggregate picture hides significant variation across the states. The variety provides an important backdrop both for the analysis of school finance issues and for decision-making in the schools.

An overview of U.S. schooling

Public school enrollment in the United States, while rising during the 1990s, reached fifty million students in 2013 and stabilized there until the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. The full impact of the pandemic is not yet known, but public school enrollment fell by 3 percent from fall 2020 to fall 2021 and remained at the lower level through fall 2022.

These students are spread very unevenly across states and, within states, across separate local school districts. At the state level, Vermont had a total of 82,000 students while California had six million. The prime operating level is the school district, of which there were 13,452 in 2019, down from 117,408 in 1940. Moreover, the states are broken up into widely varying numbers of local districts. While Hawaii and the District of Columbia each have only one school district, five states had more than one thousand districts.

But even these aggregate variations understate the degree of heterogeneity in the schools, because the growing importance of school choice leads to even more decentralized operation of education. The public school district is the prime operating unit, but it does not cover the full provision of education services. Charter schools were first established in Minnesota in 1991, and the model spread across the country. Charter schools are public schools that operate with varying degrees of autonomy, depending on the state. Typically, they are free to operate outside of many of the education regulations in a state, and importantly, they can set their own requirements for teacher preparation, salary schedules, and personnel rules independent of local teachers’ unions. They receive public funding, and they are almost always required to take all applying students or to randomize admissions if more students apply than they can accommodate. They are also required to participate in the state student assessment systems.

Students can also attend private schools or be homeschooled. While this is changing, private schools almost always receive no direct public funding, as is the case for homeschooling. These parts of the system are generally very unregulated, and they can set their own curricula, standards, and hiring rules. They generally do not participate in state student assessment systems, and little is known about their performance except as indicated by parental choices.

Figure 1 shows the substantial changes in the structure of US schools in the twenty-first century in terms of parental choices that interact with school finance. There has been a steady rise in charter school attendance with relatively stable homeschool attendance and some decline in private schooling. The private school attendance is one-quarter nonsectarian and three-quarters religious based, with the religious component evenly split between Catholic and other denominations.

Note, however, that these data are pre-pandemic. With the pandemic, traditional public school attendance fell, while the other choice options increased. Within the public school sector there was also a shift from the traditional public schools to charter schools. The longrun distribution of students remains unclear at this time.

Revenues for U.S. education

The structure of the education sector and the attendance patterns that were highlighted relate directly to school finances. Because private schools and homeschooling are not publicly supported (to any significant degree), any increased attendance in these sectors relieves state and local governments of resource demands.

Figure 2 traces revenues for the public schools from 1960 to 2019. The bulk of funding comes from state and local revenues, which each correspond to roughly 45 percent of per-pupil funding. The federal share, which began rising in the 1960s as the federal government assumed a larger role in financing schools for disadvantaged students and subsequently for special education students, rose around the 2008 recession and then returned to its historic levels. While not shown, the federal government also contributed large additional amounts of temporary funds with the onset of the pandemic in 2020.

The steady increase in per-pupil funding over the entire period puts public school revenues per student in 2019 at more than four times that in 1960 in real terms. In fact, except for the dip in school revenues after the end of federal support for the 2008 recession, real per-pupil spending (i.e., adjusted for inflation) has risen continuously for more than one hundred years.

State revenues come from a variety of sources that differ across the fiscal structures of the different states. At the same time, with few exceptions, property taxes are the dominant source of local revenues.

Public school spending incorporates both traditional public schools and charter schools. For a variety of political and institutional reasons, charter school spending is systematically below that for traditional public schools, although there is debate about the exact magnitude of differences.

The aggregate revenue data hides the wide variation that is seen at the state level. States differ significantly in how revenues are raised and in the level of spending. Table 1 shows the extent of compositional differences in school funding. Typically, most of the revenue is derived from state and local sources with the federal government contributing a smaller portion, but the federal share across states differs from 4 percent to 15 percent of funding because the federal revenues are driven largely by poverty rates and special education classifications that differ across states. States like Hawaii, with its one district, and Vermont provide almost all funding at the state level, while funding for schools in Washington, DC, is provided almost entirely at the local level. For Alaska schools, 15 percent of the funding comes from the federal government, the highest percentage of all states.

Figure 3 illustrates the distribution of state per-pupil spending levels in the 2018–19 academic year. Northeastern states spend more than $15,000 per student, significantly higher than the $9,000 to $11,000 per pupil spent by the majority of southern states.

Student performance

The United States has reliably assessed student performance with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), otherwise known as the Nation’s Report Card. The long-term trend (LTT) assessment of NAEP makes it possible to get representative national data for math and reading performance of students aged nine, thirteen, and seventeen since the 1970s. Beginning in 1992, a second version of NAEP, called Main NAEP, was started with testing of math and reading in grades four and eight.

Table 2 provides data on NAEP testing results both in terms of changes in standard deviations (SD) and in terms of these changes relative to school expenditure. The pre-pandemic results fall into two distinct clusters. There are strong gains in the level of math performance for younger students—age nine (grade four) and to a lesser extent age thirteen (grade eight). But there are much more modest gains for age seventeen math and for reading at all ages.

The scores cover different periods of time, so it is also useful within this discussion to place them in comparison to the spending on schools. When normalized by spending over the relevant time periods, the younger cohort math gains are all greater than 0.07 SD per 10 percent larger spending, while the remaining gains are all less than 0.03 SD per 10 percent larger spending.

The results were, unsurprisingly, dramatically altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The MainNAEP had testing in spring 2019 (included in Table 2) and spring 2022. In math and reading for both grade four and grade eight, average scores fell dramatically with the largest declines being recorded for math performance (Table 3). Grade eight (grade four) gains from 1990 through 2022 were down to 0.33 SD (0.72 SD). For reading, virtually all gains since 1992 were erased by the pandemic; the 1992–2022 gain was 0.01 SD for grade eight and 0.02 for grade four. It is of course difficult to know how to interpret the scores after the pandemic. Clearly, the substantial added funds over the pandemic period were insufficient to overcome the learning disadvantages of the pandemic period.

The achievement gains in Table 2 are unconditional changes in student performance. In interpreting this performance data, it is important to note that, because achievement is a function not only of schools but also of parents, peers, and neighborhoods, the data do not indicate the causal impact of schools or spending, but they do provide an important backdrop to finance discussions.

One related pattern that does consider some of the nonschool factors is the historical evolution of achievement gaps by socioeconomic status (SES). Concerns have been raised that the widening of the US income distribution led to expanding SES achievement gaps (Reardon 2011). That concern is unfounded because test information that is linked over time shows a slow shrinking of gaps for birth cohorts born between 1961 and 2001 (Hanushek et al. 2022).

Court involvement

While the federal courts were involved in school funding issues for a while after the school desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the US Supreme Court in 1973 declared school finance outside the federal role (Rodriguez v. San Antonio), effectively moving all litigation to state courts.

Litigation in the state courts is filed under the state’s equal protection clause or the state’s education clause as covered by individual state constitutions (see Hanushek and Lindseth 2009). The equity cases under the equal protection clause argue that state efforts to ameliorate either cost of education differences (e.g., for English language learners) or differences in property tax bases are insufficient. The adequacy cases under state education clauses argue that the current level of funding is insufficient to meet the constitutional obligations of the state.

The judicial branch has been asked to assess the level and pattern of school spending in 205 separate court cases adjudicated across forty-eight of the fifty states. There is no distinct geographical pattern to where these court cases have been found. The prevalence of cases is almost evenly split between below-average and above-average spending states, but the success of defendants in maintaining the existing finance structures is relatively greater in low-spending states. Perhaps surprisingly, decisions in cases focused on adequacy tend to be more successful in states that are already at above-average achievement levels as measured by NAEP.

Interestingly, while the court cases are focused on school spending, there is no overall relationship between spending growth and either decisions that favor the plaintiffs or the number of cases in any state. States with mandates from the courts to increase spending average somewhat larger immediate growth (within five years of the decision) than states where there is no such court mandate, but these short-run changes do not lead to differences in long-term growth of spending. Thus, the school finance litigation has occupied the attention of state legislatures across the country, but it has not changed the overall funding outcomes across the states.

The spending-achievement dilemma

Since the first major study of school resources and student achievement (Coleman et al. 1966), there have been questions about the strength and consistency of any relationship between the two. This very influential study, the Coleman Report, suggested that school resources were not closely related to student outcomes; instead, families and peers had the primary influence. While the study was not well executed by current scientific standards, it evoked a huge response, with many researchers pursuing related questions about the determinants of student achievement.

The early research confirmed the doubts about whether strong impacts on student achievement would follow added spending (Hanushek 2003). But the early research was marked by studies of highly variable quality, and many would not meet current empirical standards. There are a variety of problems faced by this research, but the main problem is that insufficient attention is given to finding the “causal impact” of added funding. In other words, the correlations of resources and achievement could well be affected by other unmeasured factors that bias any empirical analysis.

A more recent body of research has developed that emphasizes careful identification of the causal impact of resources on student outcomes. The ideal approach to investigating the causal impact of resources is a randomized controlled trial where some group of schools is randomly chosen to receive more resources while another group does not. Such a research design is, of course, not really feasible with schools (or in many other circumstances). As a result, a variety of other approaches that are designed to mimic randomized controlled trials have been developed. These approaches have two common elements: the existence of a change in resources that is not correlated with other factors that affect student outcomes and the availability of a control group that can indicate what would happen in the absence of the added resources.

Finding circumstances that meet the requirements for these quasi-experimental approaches is not easy. Observations of most actual school operations do not meet these stringent requirements. In fact, the relevant scientific conditions are relatively unusual. But over the past two decades a number of such circumstances have been uncovered by researchers, lending the possibility that evidence on the causal impact of added resources can be more thoroughly investigated.

The studies falling into this category come from a variety of circumstances, ranging from added funding that results from court decisions in finance cases to the impact of budget decreases following the 2008 recession. Because these studies reflect such a wide range of circumstances, it is difficult to provide a direct comparison of the various estimates, but there are now two reviews of the work over the past two decades (Jackson and Mackevicius 2021; Handel and Hanushek 2023b).

Two general conclusions come from the recent studies:

• With high probability, adding resources to schools has a positive effect on student outcomes.

• The estimated impact of resources is highly variable and depends on the context and constraints on the spending.

The first conclusion largely underscores the contentious political nature of the research in this area. Nobody believes that adding resources to schools is likely to harm students and learning, but because parts of the research enter directly into legislative and judicial decisions about funding, there has been some effort to make this the focus of attention. By phrasing the issue as “does money matter?” the intent is to set the low hurdle of “no harm.” Of course, rational public decision-making would not fund all public programs that don’t harm the recipients.

The second conclusion of the research is much more relevant. The estimates of spending impacts range from too small to reject the possibility of no impact to very large effects on both student achievement and attainment of more schools. The small estimates would not justify added public expenditure because the costs would exceed the social benefits. The large results, on the other hand, would justify considerable commitment of added public funds.

Table 4 provides a summary of the results from the separate studies of student outcomes that meet modern empirical standards for estimating the causal impact of funding. All estimates represent the expected improvement in outcomes for a 10 percent increase in funding. The preferred estimates relate to achievement test scores. While most are positive and nine of sixteen are statistically significant, they vary widely. Part of the variation just represents normal sampling errors that are present in all studies, but most of it represents true differences in the underlying impact of funding. The estimates for test scores range from a reduction in achievement of −0.24 SD (not statistically significant) to +0.54 SD (statistically significant). This large range leaves substantial uncertainty in what can be expected from added funding. Clearly, averaging across these estimates to get a predicted impact would be misleading: in addition to having a small number of estimates in the sample, we could not be confident that they are typical of the full set of funding decisions that have not been measured.

While all of the results for school attainment (high school graduation, not dropping out, and continuing to college) are positive, they also cover a very wide range. They, too, have the same challenges for interpretation.

The major difficulty is that it has not been possible to describe when funds are particularly effective or ineffective (Handel and Hanushek 2023a). The estimated impacts of resources, as noted, come from very different circumstances. They do not reflect differences in the underlying methodology, in whether funds are targeted at a particular group such as disadvantaged students, whether they come from court directives, or whether they reflect differences across states in policies. To date, little headway has been made in describing the features of the particular contexts or the particular use of funds that yields significant learning gains.

In many ways, it is not surprising that the underlying methodology does not provide clear information about the underlying structure of effectiveness. The appeal of randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental designs is that it is possible to provide causal impact information without knowing or being able to specify the full range of factors that enter into determining the outcomes. But this does not mean that the specific impact estimates are unaffected by the circumstances or even the design of the specific use of resources. The combination of the use of resources and the context within which they are applied is in how funds are used. The current research underscores the importance of how funds are used if student achievement is to be improved.

An ideal funding policy

Education policy has two broad goals: reach high levels of achievement and do this in an equitable manner. The way that we fund schools should clearly relate to meeting these goals. The overall level of funding is a political decision, not a scientific decision. Legislatures decide on funding levels on the basis of both their judgments about reaching the desired learning standards of the state and their views on the trade-offs with other public expenditures and with private expenditures (as related to tax rates). But because the outcomes of the funding depend on how the funds are used, the education policy surrounding any funding cannot be ignored.

A fundamental problem is that we do not have a set of simple policies that can be put in place and that have a high probability of successful impact on student achievement. We know some things that have an impact, but it is often not clear how they can be put in place at scale.

For example, there is extensive information about the importance of effective teachers (e.g., Hanushek 2011; Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff 2014; Bacher-Hicks and Koedel 2023). Knowing how important teachers are is different from having a clear set of policies that can be legislated and put into place. There are examples of the application of teacher policies that work in some locations, such as Washington, DC (Dee and Wyckoff 2015, 2017) and Dallas (Hanushek et al. 2023). It is nonetheless difficult to legislate adoption of these complex plans that have been honed to the circumstances of the individual areas.

There are institutional structures that tend to promote better achievement—and that are likely to work in part through promoting better teachers. For example, recent evidence points to good overall performance results from allowing the greater flexibility and parental choice that come with charter schools (see CREDO 2023). Yet the details remain difficult to legislate.

In discussing guiding principles for an effective funding system, Hanushek and Lindseth (2009) proposed seven general principles:

• If the objective is to improve outcomes, the system should focus on outcomes. Accountability for performance should be substituted for restrictions on local decision-making. 

• The system should reward those who contribute to success—that is, those who bring about high achievement.

• Rewards should be based on each person’s contribution to success and not on external factors such as the education inputs of families and neighborhoods.

• School funding formulas should minimize unproductive “gaming” by avoiding rewards for things that are easily manipulated by school personnel.

• School funding policies must recognize the underlying heterogeneity of students and their education challenges and ensure that all schools have the means to succeed. 

• School authorities must gather relevant programmatic and performance data and use it to refine and improve performance. 

• New policies or programs should be introduced in a manner that enables direct evaluation of their results.

These principles can, of course, be filled in a variety of ways, but they revolve around setting up incentives so that the decision-makers take actions that lead to better student outcomes. An example of the application of these principles is what Hanushek and Lindseth (2009) call “performance-based funding.”

The central elements of such a system, building on what has previously been successful, include a strong accountability system with incentives and direct rewards for successful performance, empowered local decision-making by both schools and parents, and an ongoing information and evaluation system. This would all be built on a rational and equitable base of funding that provides basic support and that recognizes both different abilities of districts to raise revenue and different costs for educating individuals (e.g., for children from poor families and for students with special needs).

Perhaps the key idea, however, is recognizing and rewarding success. Today many public funding programs actually do the opposite: they reward failure. For example, if a school shows poor performance from its students, more funds are provided; if the school shows improvement, funds are reduced. In other words, they provide an incentive for failure, not for success.

Policies based on incentives for outcomes do not call for completely understanding what works and why. They implicitly acknowledge that there might be alternative ways to achieve the same outcomes and that the choices might reflect both differing demands and differing capacities of schools.

Headwinds

An incentive-based funding program faces headwinds from a variety of sources. Perhaps the largest is simply the inertia in the system: “That is not how we do it.” There is a long history of approaches to funding that avoid policies offering direct positive incentives. This history is deeply embedded in both state policies and local decision-making—and leads to a majority of personnel in the current system being happy with the overall structure. Moreover, public views remain supportive of the institutional structure of the public schools. As a result, the system itself resists attempts at alteration.

The strongest force of resistance to change is the teachers’ unions. They, as a matter of principle, push back against any attempt to make policies based on differential performance (Moe 2011). As part of this, they resist accountability of schools and of personnel in general, and they resist linking resources to good performance.

At the same time, the unions do not stand alone. This is perhaps easiest to see in states that do not permit collective bargaining and that still resist changes in terms of accountability and incentives. It is also seen in the fact that right-to-work states do not systematically perform better.

COVID-19 brought new challenges to schools, and it has been common to blame all concerns and policy challenges on the pandemic. In reality, NAEP scores began falling after 2012 and simply continued their slide during the pandemic. The prior falls in scores have hit minorities and disadvantaged students exceptionally hard. The COVID cohort as a group has been seriously harmed by learning losses that accrued during the pandemic (Hanushek 2023). Just getting schools back to their 2020 levels appears to be a major challenge in a range of schools. But if we just get back to 2020, the COVID cohort will be permanently harmed. Eliminating the learning losses for this generation is a major policy challenge, but as described, it is far from the only challenge facing the schools. COVID underscores the urgency of the situation but does not provide a long-run solution.

In another matter that affects budgets but is not closely related to student outcomes, many schools are facing significant budget overhang from their retirement programs. The impact of the retirement system varies widely, depending on state rules on funding and depending in part on the character of prior contract negotiations. Most of these issues are beyond the scope of this discussion—with one exception. There is now evidence that schools tend to put too much teacher compensation into retirement plans that are valued by the teachers as having lower value than salary dollars (Fitzpatrick 2015). Thus, the state funding formula must be sensitive to the incentives sent to districts when they negotiate contracts.

See the full Hoover Institution initiative: . 

New Hampshire school districts received nearly a billion dollars in federal aid since the outbreak of COVID-19. The funding is meant to help pay for remote learning technology, HVAC upgrades, and learning loss initiatives.

But the money is due to expire in September 2024 – and some researchers warn that schools could be facing a funding cliff if they don’t prepare.

A recent study of New England states by the Georgetown University Edunomics Lab, a research center, found that New Hampshire schools are on average facing a 3 percent budget cut in the next year, in part because of the loss of federal funding and in part because of a continuing drop in enrollment.

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“The school finance landscape is shifting rapidly,” said Marguerite Rosa, a research professor and the director of the Edunomics Lab, during a briefing to reporters in October. “And there’s fiscal shocks coming that we haven’t ever seen before.”

The hardship will not hit school districts equally; schools with more low-income students will face greater budget headaches, researchers found. Schools with more low-income students received more federal COVID-relief money, but also stand to lose higher amounts of it if they don’t spend it.

Concord School District will likely need to reduce its budget by 2 percent to account for the loss of the COVID relief funding, researchers projected. Manchester School District, which has a higher proportion of students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, will face a 10 to 14 percent drop in funding, the study found.

The end of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funding could be important to the upcoming spring school budget season. School boards are preparing to draft budgets for the 2024-2025 school year and release them to residents to approve at town and school meetings in March.

According to researchers, the ESSER money may have helped New Hampshire districts mask bigger problems with declining enrollment and delay the need to downsize accordingly. The anticipated sudden loss of funding could require schools to reduce personnel, the researchers found.

In Concord, the projections suggested 11 positions might need to be cut; in Manchester, 35 to 60 positions could be at risk.

Compounding the problem is the fact that despite receiving millions of dollars under the ESSER fund, many school districts have struggled to spend it all in time.

The study found that New Hampshire schools have spent their COVID relief money at a slower rate than the national average. And schools with higher portions of lower-income students have much more money left over than those with more higher-income students, researchers found.

School districts where more than 25 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch have an average of 69 percent of their funds remaining – compared to 46 percent of funds remaining in districts with less needy kids, according to the researchers.

“With more to spend up against the deadline, these districts are at risk of a steeper fiscal cliff once the funds expire,” the researchers wrote in a presentation accompanying the report.

In total, school districts have spent 87 percent of the total amount of ESSER funding, according to a dashboard by the Department of Education.

Barrett Christina, executive director of the New Hampshire School Boards Association, said school boards across the state are aware of the coming deadline to spend the ESSER money, and will be calibrating their budgets this spring to spend down as much of the remaining money as they can.

But he said it is unlikely that schools will be able to spend down all of it.

“As a matter of economics, I don’t think 100 percent of the money is going to be spent,” Christina said in an interview. “But I’m certainly aware that districts and superintendents are budgeting appropriately and trying to find ways to use the money within the allowable uses of it.”

The issue with leftover COVID relief money is not unique to New Hampshire schools, according to the Georgetown researchers. While Congress was quick to appropriate the money at the peak of the pandemic in 2021, schools across the country have struggled to spend it down efficiently.

Part of the difficulty has been caused by the overall economy. The ESSER funds were in part designed to be used to install or upgrade HVAC systems to improve air circulation in schools, a major concern as districts moved back into full-time learning in 2021. But supply chain problems and a shortage of labor has meant that many of those infrastructure projects have faced long delays, impeding the districts’ ability to spend down the federal aid.

School districts also sought to use the federal aid to fund paraprofessional positions to address learning loss caused when students moved to remote learning in 2020 and 2021. But a broader difficulty in hiring and an exodus in existing teachers and paraprofessionals has made filling those positions difficult.

In New Hampshire, the end of COVID money is compounded by another phenomenon: falling enrollment. This month, the Department of Education reported that New Hampshire public school enrollment in the current school year dropped 1.4 percent from last year, and has fallen 20.5 percent since 2002. Lower enrollment means schools receive less money in state adequacy aid and federal funding programs.

Georgetown researchers say that combination of factors – enrollment drops and funding lapses – means New Hampshire schools should expect the hardest budgeting conditions to arrive in the next coming school year.

“We’ve been calling ‘24-’25 the bloodletting (year),” said Rosa.

State figures suggest schools will need to make adjustments when the federal money ends.

Of the nearly $900 million that has been budgeted by New Hampshire school districts since 2021, about 25 percent has gone to pay for staffing costs, according to the New Hampshire Department of Education. Another 25 percent has gone to “inspection, testing, maintenance repair, replacement, and upgrade” services.

Christina noted that school boards that had been using the COVID money to help pay for staffing costs are going to need to find off-ramps to account for the money ending soon, either by finding local money to continue paying those staff or eliminating those positions. This budget season will be the last chance to use the rest of the ESSER money to facilitate that off-ramp.

Some districts may try and use the funding for more short-term expenses, such as professional development for teachers.

When it comes to staffing, Christina noted that the Legislature’s decision to increase the state school funding formula to provide more dollars per student could help some districts absorb some of the cuts in federal aid. But he said that personnel costs have always been the most important costs for school boards to keep contained.

“I remember having conversations with school board members and administrators back in 2020, 2021, saying, ‘Be mindful of how you’re spending this money, because your salaries and your staffing are your real budget drivers,’” Christina said. “So I think we’re probably going to see a mix.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

The state department of education failed to adequately monitor school districts’ use of millions of dollars in federal pandemic relief funds, and more misuse of the money is likely to emerge as spending reviews continue.  

A state , which reviewed only a sample of purchases made since 2020, found that the West Virginia Department of Education lacked “adequate capacity” to monitor how local school districts used the federal funds.

Of the 54 school districts reviewed, 37 school districts were deemed “noncompliant” in their use of federal funds, including improper purchasing procedures or using funds for unallowable activities.

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In , the school district spent $60,000 of federal funds on pool passes.

Other funds were spent on private school expenses, food and a student choir trip out of state.

“It seems like there’s a massive problem and we should be looking at everything — but that’s not ever going to happen,” said Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha.

State lawmakers were notified of the audit’s results on Monday in Wheeling.

West Virginia has already seized control of two school districts — Upshur and Logan — due to issues that included misspending of the funds. As the state has until September 2024 to spend more than $400 million remaining in federal funds, the audit recommended that the WVDE increase its oversight of school districts’ spending by adding staff. But that’s unlikely to happen, the audit said.

“The WVDE indicated that it has no intention of increasing capacity since the deadline to spend [federal] funds is 10 months away,” said Brandon Burton, research manager for Performance Evaluation Research Division, who presented the audit.

The COVID-19 relief funds, passed down from the federal government, were supposed to be used to help schools safely reopen and help students recover from pandemic-incurred academic and emotional needs. Federal and state auditors found that states across the country spent millions in COVID-relief funds since 2020.

Beginning in March 2020, the WVDE has received nearly $1.2 billion in money from the federal funds.

Burton told lawmakers that, although state and federal monitors signed off on the school districts’ spending plans, the lack of a fiscal monitoring system within the WVDE failed to detect problems with the spending.

“Consequently, there are violations that the system did not detect,” he said.

‘I think the school systems were in a panic’

According to the audit, there were a number of reasons as to why the WVDE failed to detect the misuse of funds and improper purchasing procedures, including a lack of staff who could monitor spending.

“It’s a large amount of information that you’re having to go through,” said Burton, who added that in some counties only one person was reviewing financial transactions.

Additionally, there were issues with school districts not following proper bidding procedures and buying from vendors who weren’t registered with the state.

Schools have been permitted to purchase items from unregistered vendors, which Burton said increased the likelihood of school boards interacting with fraudulent vendors.

“ … The vast majority of [Local Education Authorities] made federal grant purchases with unregistered vendors totaling over $2.1 million,” the audit said. Most of the vendors were located out of state.

Melanie Purkey, WVDE senior officer for federal programs, told lawmakers that during the height of the pandemic, school districts were using the funds to quickly buy items like hand sanitizer, masks and laptops for remote learners. The procurement wasn’t “proper,” she said.

“I think school systems were in a panic, and thought, ‘We found a vendor who’s going to provide this, so we’re going to buy it,’” she said.

The WVDE is working on updating internal policies to emergency purchasing procedures, according to Purkey.

Reviews are ongoing of how school boards spent pandemic relief funds, and the state still has more than $476 million of those funds to spend by deadline. Unspent money will be returned to the U.S. Department of Education.

Del. Kathie Hess Crouse, R-Putnam, emphasized that the missteps would ultimately fall back on tax payers in counties where school boards must pay back misspent funds.

“There’s no consequences to them when we have to pay for that,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on and .

Bilingual home assistants, more counselors and attendance arcades to reward students who arrive on-time were among the public school initiatives aimed at reducing chronic absenteeism, which spiked during the pandemic.

The push, which was funded by federal COVID-relief money, helped boost overall attendance rates during the 2022-23 academic year, with 30% of students statewide chronically absent compared to 37% in the previous year. However, the rates remain high compared with those before the pandemic, with the 2018-19 school year seeing 15% students chronically absent, meaning they missed 15 or more days of school.

Absenteeism among traditionally disadvantaged groups like homeless and low-income students as well as Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians was even higher. Within these groups, 55% to 40% of students qualified as chronically absent in the 2022-23 school year. That too was an improvement compared with 66% to 50% of students in those groups in the previous year.

Many students have struggled with the need to return to campus after spending months at home doing online or hybrid classes during the height of the pandemic.

Getting Kids Back To School

Chronic absenteeism rates are declining across the country, but many states still have yet to return to their pre-pandemic levels of attendance, said Hedy Chang, , a nonprofit addressing chronic absenteeism. During the pandemic, she added, absenteeism rates nearly doubled across the country, with 30% of students nationwide considered chronically absent. 

Students miss school for a variety of other reasons as well, from experiencing housing instability to feeling unsafe on campus, said deputy superintendent Heidi Armstrong. As a result, the state Department of Education used federal COVID-relief funds to support a range of initiatives addressing the problem. 

“Getting to know students and the causes of their absences help guide the schools in providing the appropriate wraparound support so we can address the issues that are prohibiting students from coming to school,” Armstrong said.

Those included the addition of more counselors to help students transition back to campus and attendance arcades to reward students who arrived on time.

But despite the imposing attendance rates, the question remains if the state can maintain the momentum as the COVID relief funds run out. 

Armstrong couldn’t provide an estimate of the total amount of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds spent on improving attendance because they covered other efforts as well. But as the ESSER funds expire next fall, she added, schools will need to find money in their own budgets or apply to outside grants to continue the initiatives. 

The absenteeism rates are included in . They reflect the performance of all public school students in Hawaii, including those attending charter schools.

Helping Underserved Communities

There’s also the question of whether the state can continue to provide more targeted support to communities struggling the most. 

Homeless, low-income and foster students saw some of the greatest gains in attendance over the past two years. Armstrong said some campuses received bilingual bicultural school home assistants who could speak to parents about the importance of regular school attendance.

Aiea Elementary’s chronic absenteeism rate dropped from 69% to 41% of all students between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years. The decline for certain groups of students at the Oahu school was even greater, at 36% for Pacific Islanders and 30% for economically disadvantaged students.

Counselor Gavin Takeno attributed Aiea Elementary’s improvement in part to the school’s health practitioner, who was brought on staff in the 2022-23 academic year. The practitioner occasionally came along on counselors’ home visits to families and was able to offer check-ups for sick students, Takeno said.

Takeno also said he enlisted the help of a Chuukese translator on staff, who helped bridge the language barrier between families and teachers during home visits.

“We’re building a positive relationship, just so the parents understand and know that we’re not just here to harp on you guys,” Takeno said. “We’re here to help you guys, we understand there’s some challenges.”

Bus Problems

Principal Sharon Beck said bus transportation is a major issue for Ka’u High and Pahala Elementary, adding that one of the four bus routes to and from the school has lacked a driver since the start of the academic year. A  disproportionately affects low-income families, she added, who may be unable to take their children to school due to the costs of gas or responsibilities at work. 

Between Oct. 23 and Nov. 6, the school recorded an average daily attendance of 82% for its middle and high schoolers, Beck said. But the school always strives for an average attendance rate of 95% of students, she added. 

Other states have taken efforts to address chronic absenteeism a step further. 

In 2018, New Jersey passed a law defining chronic absenteeism and requiring districts with high absenteeism rates to create corrective action plans to address student attendance rates. The law also required schools to publish their chronic absenteeism rates in their report cards, said Cynthia Rice, a senior policy analyst at Advocates for Children of New Jersey. 

While the law’s implementation coincided with the start of the pandemic, Rice said it provided a framework to hold districts accountable for their attendance rates as students returned in the coming years. 

“We’re doing OK,” Rice said, referring to the state’s overall absenteeism rates. “But when we look at individual (district) numbers it’s appalling.” 

In early 2021, Connecticut also introduced a home visitation program to promote student attendance as they returned to campuses, Chang said. The program, which spanned 15 districts across the state, promoted positive relationships between schools and families, particularly those who were from high-needs populations, she added. 

She added that targeted support around chronic absenteeism needs to continue, even as federal relief dollars expire and schools see slow improvements in their attendance rates. 

“A lot of this does require people power,” Chang said. “The ending of ESSER relief is a bit challenging because we might not be able to fully recover yet before the dollars go out.”

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.

With federal pandemic relief funds nearing expiration, Hoosier schools still have about $1 billion up for grabs.

The money still to be claimed is part of the more than $2.8 billion made available to Indiana schools through temporary federal funding, .

Approved by Congress in 2020 and 2021, the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) and Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) programs are supposed to help schools districts manage financial hardships and make up for educational disruptions spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Some ESSER funds expired last year. Of that, Indiana schools claimed $203 million, equal to about 99% of their available share, according to state data.

Another round of funds are set to expire this week. Hoosier schools have so far claimed 87% of those ESSER dollars, with around $106 million still remaining. IDOE officials said some applications have already been submitted and are still being processed, while other schools are continuing to apply for funds.

Schools must spend — or commit to spend — whatever other dollars they qualify for by the end of September 2024 — or one year’s time. Any money left unspent is returned to the federal government.

Since 2021, more than $1.8 billion of Indiana’s overall pandemic relief share has been issued out to school districts around the state.

Indiana’s education department manages the lump sum and is in charge of reimbursing K-12 school districts for qualified expenses.

Where money has gone, so far

Under federal requirements, ESSER dollars were distributed based on districts’ most recent Title I allocations — which meant schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families were prioritized. School systems with greater numbers of children from low-income families received more money.

The aid has few restrictions, meaning districts can decide how to use the dollars.

Federal rules indicate that at least 20% of all funds must be earmarked to address student learning loss, however. Additionally, 90% of Indiana’s ESSER allocation must flow directly to school districts. The remaining 10% is reserved for statewide programming.

State officials said much of the district-level spending has so far been on student instruction needs, as well as teacher recruitment and retention efforts.

Muncie Community Schools officials said most of the district’s $38.4-million dollar federal allocation is being spent on major renovations to elementary schools. The district plans to spend about $30 million on those projects and about $5 million on instruction.

To date, the district has another $6.8 million to use.

Earlier this year, Muncie schools nearly a quarter-million dollars in statewide ESSER funding to expand work-based learning opportunities.

Across Fort Wayne Community Schools, on facilities improvements and student instruction has accounted for about $87.5 million of the district’s $158.4 million allotment.

That included renovations to two elementary schools to eliminate open-concept spaces and add new classrooms, in addition to window and HVAC replacements, asbestos- and mercury-containing floor removal and air filtering upgrades in other buildings. The district also used relief dollars to purchase books, online materials and other supplies to aid in learning loss efforts.

Fort Wayne schools can still claim about $40 million after this month.

Detailed for the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation show expenses for virtual learning and stipends for instructional staff. Student support needs — like for nursing and social work staff, and mental health and counseling services — are also being paid for with federal relief dollars. The district has used about $57 million of its $85 million allocation.

The South Bend Community School Corporation received about $94.6 million in ESSER and GEER funds. The district’s prioritizes before- and after-school programs, as well as summer school, along with new curricular materials, updated school technology, stipends for staff and building upgrades. Roughly $45.7 million of the money that can be claimed by South Bend schools is still available, according to IDOE.

Hamilton Southeastern schools, north of Indianapolis, initially surveyed teachers, parents and students to help decide how the one-time money should be spent. Getting students back on track, academically, emerged as a key priority, district officials said.

Much of the district’s $3.3 million in federal funds claimed so far were used to hire extra teachers to target small group tutoring and additional lessons that take place outside regular school hours.

Spending plans still in action

Dozens of school districts are still seeking reimbursement for expenses.

Of those with available funds, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) still has the most to spend, according to IDOE’s federal aid dashboard. As of Aug. 28 — the latest data made available by the agency — IPS had $89.6 million for reimbursement. The district was allocated $217.3 million overall.

IDOE data suggests that nearly a quarter of IPS’ total allocation — about $50 million — has so far been used for student instruction needs. A indicates priority spending on accelerated learning for language arts and math, as well as efforts to increase in-person attendance and out-of-school tutoring opportunities.

At least 11 Hoosier school districts have used the entire allocations. That includes the Randolph Southern and Tri-County school corporations.

Still, some districts have requested little to no reimbursements.

About 75 districts statewide still had 50% or more of their allocations available at the end of August. Some of those available funds will expire if not expensed by the next Sept. 30 deadline.

Many of those schools have spending plans in place, however, indicating what the remaining funds are earmarked for in the current and coming school years.

Herron Classical Schools in Indianapolis said it for various capital projects, classroom instructional resources, and costs associated with newly-hired staff.

Shoals Community Schools for new Chromebooks, cafeteria supplies and social emotional counseling software.

The Hanover School Corporation also for building improvements, substitute teacher wages, curriculum upgrades, new technology for students and professional development for educators.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

The North Carolina education news outlet EdNC is a member of the , an organization of 21 nonprofits from 14 states that collect, analyze and distribute information on governmental activities to help citizens and policymakers improve their communities. As a past president of the association, I was asked to moderate a panel on the looming fiscal cliff facing states and districts at this summer’s annual conference in Worcester, Massachusetts.

As school districts nationwide face a federal funding cliff, government researchers from independent think tanks around the country met in Worcester, Massachusetts, to discuss how municipalities and states are preparing.

Since 1914, the has been connecting researchers working to improve their communities. This year’s annual conference was hosted by the .

During the pandemic, the federal government issued three tranches of funding totaling $190 billion for school districts. Districts spent this money on everything from one-time costs like HVAC upgrades to recurring costs to address learning loss and student wellness.

The last round of funding must be committed by Sept. 30, 2024 — just a little more than a year from now.

Districts can request 18-month extensions on spending the funds and in extraordinary circumstances. But for most districts, the fiscal cliff is looming large.

It’s the loss of federal funding that’s being used to pay educators that has researchers nationwide concerned. When this money goes away, districts will either have to get funding from other sources or cut back.

A issued in March identified 15 states facing the most complex challenges with the fiscal cliff.

Massachusetts has a statewide strategy to increase funding for schools that should help districts cope.

In the months ahead of the pandemic, the state had been preparing to implement the Student Opportunity Act, a passed in November 2019.

“COVID derailed the first year of the plan,” said panelist Colin Jones, a senior policy analyst for . “In the beginning, it wasn’t clear — particularly for the low-income districts that were the targets of the reforms — that they were going to get more federal aid than they were losing by delaying the plan.”

“There is a false narrative,” Jones said, “that districts are sitting on piles of cash.”

That narrative is complicated by the fact that Massachusetts hasn’t passed a state budget for 2023-24 even though the fiscal year started July 1, he said.

“As ESSER fades away, we have to go back to where we were heading,” Jones said. “States have to assume they are on their own.” He noted that the toughest part of the conversation for states that want to address the cliff is where the revenue will come from.

Panelist Alexis Lian is director of policy for the , which is part of , a research consortium “designed to support evidence-based spending, analyze the impact of COVID recovery funds and provide a platform for the field to learn from one another and reflect on progress made.”

EdImpact launched 24 data dashboards for districts in Massachusetts showing planned investments of the federal funding, finding investments focused on academic recovery, including high-dosage tutoring, acceleration academics and high-quality curriculum; and on social emotional and mental health, including implementing , SEL curriculum and mental health literacy.

Lian said “90% of district decisionmakers cited challenges deploying stimulus funds.”

For comparison, 260 school districts nationwide to see how they deployed federal funding.

As of July, Lian said, in Massachusetts all of ESSER I funding has been committed, 82% of ESSER II and just 33% – $1.1 billion – of ESSER III.

“There is an enormous amount of money to still allocate,” said Lian. “Districts are working incredibly hard to make really difficult, strategic final decisions.”

Based on their work with districts, EdImpact issued six takeaways for investing the remaining funds, including a coordinated statewide approach to prioritize investments that impact students and can be scaled.

Panelist Jason Stein, vice president and research director of the , said “one important learning from the Wisconsin experience is that as legislation like [the American Rescue Plan] gets debated at the federal level, it can still play out at the state and local level in very different ways from the original intent.” 

The federal legislation authorizing funding contained a intended to keep states from reducing their support for public education.

Stein said his state has revenue caps that limited the revenue districts could receive the last two years, so there was no increase in state funding. “It was in reaction,” he said, “to a perception that districts were getting so much federal money that there was no need for the state to do its typical funding.” 

Many districts in Wisconsin went on to pass referenda, Stein said, with voters opting to raise their own taxes to increase school funding.

Making national news, Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat and a former teacher and state superintendent, used his partial veto power and some of the proposed state budget to institute a $325 funding increase per student for the next 400 years — through 2425.

In North Carolina, where the 115 school districts are facing the fiscal cliff and other threats to enrollment and funding — including a proposed expansion of school choice — is looking at district , which operate like savings accounts, and public school foundations in and as tools for districts to cope with revenue pressure, whatever the cause.

An actual boots-on-the-ground perspective of the federal funding cliff was shared with researchers by panelist Sara Consalvo, budget director for the .

According to Consalvo, her district used federal money to bridge funding for the state’s Student Opportunity Act, stabilize funding because of changes in enrollment, upgrade and maintain ventilation systems in 44 schools, address learning loss through summer school and afterschool programs, purchase personal protective equipment and technology, and acquire a fleet of new yellow school buses.

The district, which had previously contracted for school bus services, received permission to purchase 165 buses. 

“It’s been an absolute success,” Consalvo said of this one-time investment.

The upsides of spending made possible by the pandemic relief funding are held in tension with the reality of the federal fiscal cliff for both district leaders and the researchers watching this drama unfold. 

“As school district leaders look to their 2024 budgets and beyond,” says a called “Up in the Air” by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, “many see that a key lifeline is fraying and about to break.” 

With all the talk about using federal pandemic relief funds to solve such challenges as student absenteeism, lagging academic performance and adolescent mental health crises, relatively little attention has been paid to the $800 million in COVID aid that can be used to address a hidden but significant driver of these, and other, post-pandemic educational problems: homelessness.

Homelessness is easily overlooked in the classroom and the community, because children without homes are very rarely on the streets in plain view. They are more likely to bounce between the homes of other people, motels, cars and other less visible locations, especially in rural and suburban areas. Even with significant undercounting, public schools identified more than 1.2 million children and youth experiencing homelessness in 2021-22, a slight increase over the previous year. The of students experiencing homelessness is more than double the rate of all children, and they graduate at significantly lower rates than students from low-income families with stable housing.

Federal lawmakers have given school districts an opportunity to address the problem with in American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth Funds, money that can be used for the identification, enrollment and school participation of children and youth experiencing homelessness. Allocated through both competition (an initial tranche of $200 million) and formula (a second tranche of $600 million), the funds have reached 53% of school districts to date — the number of districts reached with annual homeless education funding allocations in the past.

Some districts are using the resources in creative ways to support families and encourage attendance. Lawton Public Schools in Oklahoma, for instance, is providing cell phones to students who are experiencing homelessness on their own, purchasing a vehicle for transportation and hiring mentors and outreach specialists. Before receiving the federal funds, the district employed traveling counselors to help get homeless students to school until they could be included in the district’s transportation system. But variation in counselors’ schedules made these arrangements unreliable. Purchasing a dedicated vehicle helped to address the problem. The district is also using the vehicle for “home” visits to students and families and to transport students to health services.

Fairfax County Public Schools, Virginia, learned from its attendance specialists that students in homeless families often lacked laundry, school supplies, clothing, jackets and other basic needs. The district is providing store cards to support them — and to build trust to re-engage families in learning. The district is also using the COVID relief funds to provide homeless students with dental care, glasses and specialized transportation.

Clifton Public Schools in New Jersey also prioritized students’ immediate needs by purchasing $50 store cards from local retailers such as Walgreens, Target and Shop Rite and $25 gas cards. Families meet with the district’s supervisor of counseling and student services to determine eligibility and prioritize their needs. The district uses the cards to purchase items, and delivers them to the family or the school. This approach has led to an increase in the identification of students in need because families have been more willing to share their homeless status once they’re aware of resources to support them.

The school district in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, is using its federal aid to provide students experiencing homelessness and their families with hotel stays of three to five days. These provide families with extra time to figure out their next steps and keep their children safe and in school. As a first step, district’s community outreach director developed partnerships with local hotels with a letter outlining the definition of homelessness under federal law and the unique needs of families in Lafourche Parish. The district then worked with its social workers to establish the services that families would receive during their short-term hotel stays, including meals and transportation. The social workers welcome arriving families to assess the support needed during their stay.

Alaska’s Anchorage School District found that paying for car repairs for families or teens is more economical than providing taxi services. If a family reaches out to the homeless education program, staff members determine if car repairs are feasible and ask the family or youth to obtain an estimate. The program will cover up to about $200 in car repair costs, and families are asked to pay a portion of the expense. Once the repair is completed, staff members use a school district credit card, submitting receipts with the car repair business’ name and amount charged.

There is to identifying and supporting students who experience homelessness to make the most of the one year remaining of the federal funding. Including homelessness in school, district and state efforts to strengthen academic recovery, improve attendance and bolster student mental health is essential to move the needle on these core challenges.

Schools nationwide received federal COVID-19 relief money to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students at the height of the pandemic. But those funds when Congress .

Now, individual states are figuring out how to move forward.

Oregon has taken a few steps forward and a few steps back this legislative session when it comes to plans to feed the state’s 550,000 students.

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would have created a permanent pot of money for universal school meals but it was reduced to a task force before its first hearing, with lawmakers claiming not all schools could scale up that quickly.

Rep. Courtney Neron, D-Wilsonville, who chairs the House education committee and is one of the bill’s seven chief sponsors, said it was difficult to curtail the proposal.

“We understand how critical it is for all children to have adequate nutrition, and we want to make that (happen) as soon as possible,” she told the House committee earlier this month.

As it stands, the bill calls for a recommendation by the task force by September 2024 of how to implement universal meals statewide. It is scheduled for a committee vote on Wednesday. The Oregon Department of Education estimates it would cost between $145 million to $377 million to do so in the 2023-25 biennium.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture last week announced a new proposal that could significantly increase the number of Oregon schools that qualify for federal reimbursements for meals.

Importance of meals

The Oregon Food Bank estimates more than 114,000 children in Oregon live in households that struggle to afford food. Having access to enough nutritious food can have a big impact on a child’s ability to socialize, focus on their studies and perform academically.

“ shows that students who eat breakfast and lunch at school do better,” said Matt Newell-Ching, senior policy manager for the Oregon Food Bank, when testifying to state lawmakers on March 15. “It’s kind of odd that we treat school meals differently than we treat other key educational elements within the school environment.”

Oregon has been a leader among states when it comes to food access in schools, and in recent years, it’s doubled the number of students who get it.

In the past, about 25% of Oregon schools provided free breakfast and lunch to all students. They did so because they qualified for federal assistance. Now 55% do, thanks to the passage of the state’s Student Success Act in 2019, which is partly dedicated money for meals.

In some cases, entire districts feed students. Salem-Keizer Public Schools – the second largest district in Oregon with more than 40,300 students – is the largest district in the state to offer universal meals.

About 84% of Salem-Keizer students are considered to be . But proponents of these programs say helping all students reduces the stigma around hunger and poverty.

Other states

Some states – Colorado, California and Maine – have permanent, universal school meal programs. And at least 21 states are drafting similar legislation this session, including Minnesota lawmakers, who advanced the day before Oregon’s first hearing for House Bill 3030.

Additionally, starting in the 2023-24 school year, will automatically qualify for free or reduced-price school meals.

But what Oregon lawmakers and advocates are paying the most attention to is the U.S Department of Agriculture’s new proposal, released last week, which would expand the number of schools that are eligible to get federally reimbursed for providing meals via the , also known as CEP.

The provision allows the nation’s highest-poverty schools and districts to serve breakfast and lunch at no cost to all enrolled students without needing applications. Schools are reimbursed using a formula based on the percentage of students eligible for free meals because of their participation in other benefit programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently to expand support for and access to school meal programs, including awarding $10 million in grants for schools to expand nutrition education and a that would lower the threshold for schools to gain access to federal funding.

Advocates say these changes could allow hundreds more schools in Oregon to provide universal meals, but the state will still need to pay more to cover the gap between what the districts, state and federal governments each contribute.

such as the Oregon Food Bank are support an omnibus spending bill, , to allocate more money from the state’s general fund to the Oregon Department of Education to help cover these costs and incentivize schools to take advantage of the new offerings.

House Bill 5014 had a public hearing last Thursday before the joint subcommittee on education. It is not yet scheduled for a work session.

“I have lots of optimism that there is momentum growing for universal school meals in Oregon,” Newell-Ching told the Capital Chronicle. “It’s no longer a question of if we’ll get there, but (when).”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

When COVID struck in 2020, the then-eighth grader’s Upper Valley, New Hampshire middle school campus shut down for several weeks to pivot to virtual learning, like most others across the country. Paige knew then that her daughter Amy — whose name has been changed in this piece for the student’s privacy — was at risk of falling behind even further. Once online school started, live instruction was only on a “part-time basis,” Paige said.

“There was lost learning time,” she said. “Sometimes there weren’t teachers because the teachers were sick.”

Although Paige didn’t know it yet, Amy had dyslexia. For years, the now-17-year-old’s condition went undiagnosed. Meanwhile, it complicated the teen’s part-time job at a clothing store, because she struggled to type in email addresses at the cash register.

In a last-ditch effort to help her daughter, Paige connected with a tutor specializing in phonics-based literacy, who she now works with via a relatively new state program. After beginning tutoring, Amy showed quick improvement on spelling and reading tests administered by her high school, Paige said. Amy’s literacy coach recognized signs of dyslexia and pointed the family toward screening for the disability, which led to her diagnosis and extra services at school.

“I’ve seen progress,” Paige said. “The way [her tutor] works with her is not a way … a teacher would have the time to work with her in a classroom situation.”

That sort of individualized, intensive coaching is a key solution the Granite State has bet on to help students like Amy get back on track after the pandemic. The state is entering its second year offering the scholarship, which uses a digital wallet to provide $1,000 for private tutoring to any young person whose education was negatively impacted by the pandemic. The scholarship is available to all students, regardless of need, and can be applied toward tutoring from state-approved educators.

“When I explain the program to [parents], they become very excited, like, ‘Oh, this is great,’” New Hampshire Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut said. “In some cases, they’re almost like, ‘It’s too good to be true. How can this possibly be?’”

But families in New Hampshire have tapped into less than a third of the available scholarship funds. So far this academic year, 724 young people have received scholarships — accounting for just $724,000 out of a $2.5 million total funded by federal COVID relief cash. Upon inception, the state granted scholarship eligibility only to students from low-income families, but with signups lagging and substantial funds remaining, they made access universal.

State testing in 2022 revealed that more than half of New Hampshire students were not proficient in math and over 40% were behind in English, though scores have rebounded slightly since 2021, according to data provided by the state. Research shows sustained individual or small-group tutoring can be one of the best ways to help children catch up.

“One student might be struggling with functions. Another is struggling with algebraic equations,” Edelblut said. “Those are the kinds of things that in a one-on-one tutoring session with a teacher that can be drawn out, they can be addressed, they can be targeted, and we can fill in those gaps.”

Soon after the Paige family began tutoring, they saw a post on social media about the YES! grant and realized they qualified. Though they’re still working out the logistics of the digital wallet, the funds will cover more than two months of intensive lessons, which will be “definitely helpful, without a doubt,” Paige said.

The program has also served its purpose for student Sylas Marrotte. The scholarship gave him access to a trained special education teacher for twice-a-week math and reading tutoring, grandmother Sherry Newman said.

“My grandson, who already had learning disabilities, was falling way behind [during COVID],” Newman wrote in an email to ����Ӱ��. “The tutor was very flexible and supportive.”

The program could help to “democratize” the private tutoring market, which often is available only to wealthier families, said Matthew Kraft, associate professor of education at Brown University. 

But in his eyes, the slow uptake among low-income families is a damning indicator, signaling either poor advertising to the neediest parents or failure to alleviate other barriers such as transportation costs. 

It’s possible many families “just never learned about the program or couldn’t figure out how to sign up or didn’t think that they could make it work,” Kraft said. “I don’t think … they’ve met the demand in that group of students.”

Nationwide, parental interest in learning recovery options has been lower than policymakers would have hoped, according to recent from the Brookings Institute. Despite significant gaps in learning for millions of students across the country, less than a third of families said they wanted their kids to participate in tutoring and less than a quarter said they were interested in district-run summer camps.

Even if all the New Hampshire tutoring funds get disbursed, Kraft observed, it will still only serve 2,500 learners — a drop in the bucket compared to the state’s over 185,000 students, including roughly 50,000 who are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunch, a proxy indicator for the number of students living in poverty.

The New Hampshire Department of Education does not “at this time” know the share of low-income students who have taken advantage of the tutoring scholarship money compared to wealthier youth, Edelblut said. Students could opt for virtual sessions in cases where transportation presented a barrier, he noted.

The YES! scholarship is one of three state-funded tutoring options available to New Hampshire families. The state announced this month that it had that will give more than 100,000 students access to the site’s 24/7 digital tutoring services. Since early in the pandemic, the state has also partnered with Khan Academy founder Sal Khan’s initiative, providing the state’s students with free access to the site’s learning resources. That site has seen about 4,300 New Hampshire visitors, said Kimberly Houghton, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Education, although she did not have figures on how many tutoring sessions students have actually participated in.

Among the 74 individuals and organizations registered by the state as , including specialists in math, literacy, speech and executive functioning, a handful said over email that none or just one student had reached out for tutoring sessions.

But Krista Martin, who runs the Sylvan Learning centers in Portsmouth and Salem, has worked with six students who have used YES! scholarship money to pay for sessions. Two of those families were already paying for Sylvan tutoring services before the grant and now use the funds to offset costs, but the other four enrolled once they received the scholarship, Martin said. 

For the most part, families come in hopes that the sessions will help their kids recover from the pandemic, Martin wrote in an email.

“​​For many of our students, the breakdowns started during the COVID years,” Martin said. “Since the pandemic, we have heard from many families that they want their children to enjoy school again and show interest in what they are learning like they did before COVID.”

For the Paige family, Amy’s struggles began earlier, but YES! has helped — at least a little — along the way. On an August evening in northern New Hampshire, tutor Lynne Howard sat at her dining table and helped the teen break down words into their individual sound components. Howard was a longtime reading specialist in the local schools and now runs a tutoring company called Summit Literacy.

“Say hush,” Howard said.

“Hush,” Amy responded.

“Now say hush but change ‘shh’ to ‘mm,’ ” Howard added on.

“Hum,” Amy answered.

Word by word, sound by sound, Howard and Amy made out ways to fill the student’s learning gaps. They identified prefixes, suffixes, root words, closed and open vowels — steadily making progress to improve her spelling. And their time together ended with praise that, for many years before tutoring, Paige was concerned she’d never hear about her daughter’s literacy.

“And that’s it, you worked hard today,” Howard said at the end of an hour. “Excellent job.”