The amount of money spent on special education students in Washington varies widely by district.

That’s according to a new analysis of state data from July 2022 to June 2023 of Washington districts where there are over 2,500 students. According to the data, the amount each district spends per special education student ranges from $8,708 in Goldendale School District to $33,056 in Bellevue School District.

“Historically, our tendency is to look the other way on special education spending,” said Marguerite Roza, director of Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, . “It hasn’t gotten the same kind of scrutiny that other elements in the school district budget have.”

Special education is also consuming a rising share of Washington’s public education budget, now making up over 14.5% of that spending as of the most recent fiscal year, according to the Edunomics Lab analysis. That can force cuts elsewhere, Roza said.

Washington has of a district’s population that can receive special education funding. Some lawmakers and advocates have pushed for the Legislature to end the cap entirely, as many districts have identified more special education students than they’re funded for.

Both candidates running for superintendent of public instruction are also calling for more special education spending.

But there are concerns about how eliminating the cap could raise overall state spending. Legislators who have resisted the idea have said it would require scaling back in other areas.

More spending on special education doesn’t necessarily mean better academic outcomes for students, said Roza. That’s based on state-by-state comparisons by Edunomics Lab, which found that identifying more students with disabilities or increasing special education staff were not associated with better reading outcomes.

, specific learning disabilities, includes children who are dyslexic or have other neurological differences that interfere with their ability to process language.

More spending on special education per student doesn’t directly correlate with the number of special education students in a district, either. Instead, more spending on special education often tracks with district size, likely because larger districts use a standardized approach to serving special education students, Roza said.

The Edunomics Lab analysis found that instead of spending on special education specifically, what improved reading outcomes for students with disabilities was spending more on reading instruction for all students, regardless of disability.

To ensure districts are getting the most out of their money, the lab’s researchers recommend districts scrutinize their special education budgets and compare their costs and outcomes to their peers.

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 .

Officials are dipping into reserves to cover an $88 million deficit. They’re continuing afterschool enrichment programs, like STEM and basketball, and promising to protect teaching, counseling and school leadership positions even though the COVID relief funds that paid for many of them have nearly dried up.

In talks with staff and the public, the district heard that the extra support “dramatically moved the needle academically and should be continued,” said district spokeswoman Christina Clark. Philadelphia, she added, aims to become “the fastest improving, large urban school district in the nation.”

But for now, the budget doesn’t reflect what some experts call “right-sizing” — reducing staffing levels to reflect an enrollment decline that is expected to for another decade. 

“You’re making a big gamble,” said Daniel DiSalvo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “You’re either flatlining or increasing your school spending while the number of students is falling.” 

But Philadelphia, which is projected to run out of reserves in two years, is far from the only urban district in that spot. In a new paper released Thursday, DiSalvo and Reade Ben, an economic policy analyst at the institute, take stock of similar issues in the nation’s largest school districts. They show that while enrollment nationally fell 2% between 2013 and 2023, the number of teachers rose 11% and per-pupil spending continued to climb.

Prior to the pandemic, population and enrollment declines tended to hit certain pockets of the country, experts say; even Philadelphia closed more than 20 schools . But district and state leaders have no experience dealing with enrollment loss of this magnitude, which is exacerbated by expiring relief funds.

“Historically, when we’ve seen districts go through these things it’s been like a few of them at a time — not like all of the big districts at once,” said Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab. Those districts, she added, have “such a big impact on our country’s perception of what’s going on with public education.”

Feeling the ‘brunt of it’

The amount districts spend per student increased in all nine of the cities the authors examined — New York City, Houston, San Diego, Dallas, Austin, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Antonio and Los Angeles. Houston, for example, spent $8,011 per student in 2013 and in 2022, spent $14,183.

Total staff increased over that time period in four cities — New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Dallas. The number of staff members in New York City increased from 11,202 to over 12,700.

“It is evident that school districts have yet to adjust their staffing and budgeting to the reality of fewer students,” they wrote.

Their data, however, doesn’t reflect more recent actions in some districts. New York City Mayor Eric Adams $700 million from the district’s budget since November, but canceled a third round of cuts in February.

The story plays out a bit differently from state to state.

Philadelphia is looking for relief from the legislature, which is under a 2023 court order to remedy past school funding disparities. currently pending would close an annual $1.4 billion gap for the district over the next seven years and significantly reduce future deficits, Clark said.

The authors also focus on Texas, which, unlike Pennsylvania, is growing and is California as the state with the most students in public school by this fall.

But that growth is more in the and in “,” said Brian Eschbacher, an enrollment consultant who works with many districts in the state. He noted that school boards don’t get a lot of say in whether a charter opens in their district because the state education agency authorizes of them.

“If 5,000 students enroll in charters instead of district schools, then the district feels the entire brunt of it,” Eschbacher said.

Confronting that reality, the Plano district is , while leaders in Fort Worth have delayed for now. The Fort Worth district did, however, eliminate more than that were mostly paid for with relief funds, including “success coaches” who worked with high school freshmen, instructional specialists and assessment staff. Another victim of enrollment loss: Full-time , which some schools are cutting.

“Hopefully, kids will be selecting the right book because there’s not going to be anybody there to guide them,” said Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, who leads Parent Shield Fort Worth, an advocacy group. She doesn’t have a problem with the district closing schools, but understands why some community members pushed back. “Schools are like landmarks where parents and grandparents and older children have gone.” 

The outlook is more dire in California, which is another 660,000 students by the 2032-33 school year.

The reaction to those forecasts has varied. Some districts, like San Diego Unified, announced — and then — layoff notices this spring, while others, including , issued pink slips. Some plan to not replace staff members who leave or retire.

“It’s a mixed bag,” said Michael Fine, CEO of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, which monitors districts in financial distress. The number of districts on his watch list actually dropped from 37 to 23 between December and March. “What that tells me is that school boards did what they needed to do, given the data about where they were headed.”

The greatest loss — 278,600 students — is expected in Los Angeles County, where some districts, like Inglewood Unified, began years before the pandemic. Home to massive new pro sports and entertainment venues that are pushing up the , Inglewood is closing at the end of next school year. 

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest in the county, is currently from firms that will “attract and retain students.” But the district is also closing one under-enrolled school this summer, and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has that more are to come.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has from a shortfall in state revenues so they can adjust more gradually to the loss of federal aid. But school board members and the say the plan, which includes borrowing from reserves, is risky and could end up costing districts more in the future. 

To DiSalvo and Ben, that pushback shows that unions will push for a “new normal” of lower staff-student ratios and higher spending.

“This will put policymakers in a bind,” they wrote. To avoid cuts, they’ll have to either “increase taxes or find other ways to pay for schools with more teachers and staff but fewer students.”

Asking voters to approve a tax hike is also a risk, Roza said. In Vermont, for example, where residents vote on school budgets, many are their district’s proposals.  

“Vermont has had steady enrollment declines for decades,” she said. “So communities are like, ‘Why do the costs keep going up?’ ”

The expiration of these funds in about 14 months could be the biggest jolt to school finances that districts have ever faced. But an analysis by ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ has found that the majority of states lack laws to protect districts from a fiscal emergency like this one — a fact that could leave school systems unprepared for the upheaval to come.

“Deficits will creep up quickly and really destabilize a district,” said Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab. “In the end, the students will suffer if districts wait too long to rein in their spending.”

School systems currently face compound pressures. Declining enrollment means less state funding, and they’re paying because of a tight labor market and more for supplies because of inflation. To better withstand the strain, experts like Roza advise districts to estimate their revenues and spending a few years in advance, taking into account enrollment trends, taxes and the potential for an economic downturn.

But only six states have such requirements. Experts also recommend setting aside money for fiscal emergencies, but just 10 states mandate the practice. 

Most states view district budgets as a local matter. Officials say they can offer little more than advice as the education system heads for what Roza calls a “.”

“For these next few years, … state monitoring of finances is an absolute must,” she said. Relief funds have “distorted district finances. Many are overcommitting at a time when they should be downsizing.”

She pointed to the San Diego school district as an example. In June, the board approved for teachers to avoid a strike, at a cost of $517 million. But projections show a nearly by the 2024-25 school year.

The end of relief funds could also in some states, further impacting what programs, like tutoring and summer school, districts will be able to sustain. In addition, Congress’s recent deal to prevent the government from hitting a debt ceiling and defaulting on its financial obligations could affect how districts wean themselves off pandemic money. 

between conservative Republicans and the White House wiped out the chance for an increase in federal K-12 spending next year — money that could have cushioned the blow once COVID money dries up. Now the House is proposing a in the education budget.

“If I’m a state budget director, the debt limit deal tells me I’m on my own to try to soften the cliff landing with added revenue,” said Jonathan Travers, managing partner at Education Resource Strategies, a nonprofit that advises districts on financial matters. “I might have been holding out hope for help from Title I, but that seems gone now.” 

Planning for Fiscal Emergencies: Three Maps

‘Grounded in the truth’

Districts have been down this road before.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in the wake of the Great Recession, was at the time the federal government’s largest one-time investment in schools, providing districts close to $71 billion in extra funding. When those funds ran out, however, many districts were unprepared: They , imposed and increased .

A from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General examined spending decisions in 22 districts, including the Wichita Public Schools in Kansas. 

Susan Willis, the district’s payroll director at the time, remembers a “pretty ugly” seven-to-eight year period with no raises for teachers. The district eliminated its grants department and several facilities and professional development positions. Enrollment was growing, so leaders “couldn’t be looking into the classroom for reductions,” said Willis, now the district’s chief financial officer.

A decade later, Wichita’s enrollment is , and as pandemic aid expires, leaders are looking to eliminate positions they could have cut earlier, but didn’t — particularly at the elementary level. The challenge, Willis said, is how to offer salaries high enough to compete against suburban districts while continuing to fund that she thinks have back above 80%.

The 2012 report said that a funding cliff doesn’t mean that districts didn’t make good use of temporary funds or that the relief funds weren’t the “right call.” Leaders just need to be “grounded in the truth, no matter how brutal,” Travers said.

Budget reserves

Whether the fiscal cliff turns out to be a gradual slope or a precipitous drop could hinge on how much federal money a district received. A from Education Resource Strategies identified 15 states where the expiration of those funds will hit harder because they received more federal aid and have a lot of districts with high poverty rates. 

Travers said it will be easier to identify which districts “have the potential for a painful landing” later this summer when auditors review districts’ finances from the past year. It’s “critical,” he added, that states keep a close watch on districts where relief funds total more than a quarter of their annual budget. The more money districts received, the harder it could be to reduce spending once the funds disappear. That could include some of the nation’s , including New York City and Houston and those with high-poverty levels like Detroit and Philadelphia.

To prepare for lean years, Ohio, for example, requires districts  to estimate their budgets five years in advance. Washington mandates four years. But in some cases, school finance officials’ desire to plan ahead conflicts with budget timelines.  

“We can’t forecast because we never know what our state aid is going to be every year,” said Susan Young, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials. 

The state doesn’t require districts to put aside funds for emergencies. But those that choose to could find themselves brushing up against a state cap that limits reserve funds to 2% of their budget. Young’s organization would like lawmakers to raise that limit, especially as relief funds expire. Some have already made and are asking voters to raise property taxes. 

Reserves can help school systems with a temporary shortfall, but can’t do much for a financially strapped district that has or failed to issue layoff notices in time for the next school year. Like COVID aid, reserves eventually dry up.

“There are no reserves that are going to buy you a whole school year,” said Michael Fine, CEO of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, which was created by a state law in 1991.

The California law also created an early warning system in which county education agencies must sign off on district budgets and, when a district is headed for insolvency, can wrest authority from a superintendent and school board.

Sixteen states have similar processes, some more extensive than others. , for example, grades districts on whether they pay their bills on time and post financial information. The Kentucky state board monitors any district that adopts a budget with less than 2% of its revenues set aside for reserves. 

In California, are now in serious financial trouble. Ten may not be able to meet their financial obligations in the next couple years, and three, Fine said, “are running out of cash.”

Given the pandemic windfall, he’s surprised any hit that point. But with the state’s , he expects more to find themselves on the list. 

“The news probably only gets worse for 2024-25, not better,” he said.

In southern California’s San Bernardino County, where 33 districts are spread over 20,000 square miles, Thomas Cassida, director of business advisory services, expects the majority of them — 28 — to have a budget deficit in 2024-25 or the year after.

They still have time to scale back. For example, some have spent relief funds to open health centers, but might have to cut positions for the counselors and other mental health professionals hired to run them. 

He’s most worried about districts that were in bad financial shape before the pandemic. When the relief funds are gone, they could find themselves in the same place.

“Every county has at least one district that is a problem child,” he said.

In Ventura County, it was the Ojai Unified School District, where Fine said leaders ignored multiple warnings about the need to cut roughly $3 million. About 30 minutes from the coast, Ojai is known for boutique hotels and wellness retreats. But tensions ran high at a  Feb. 21 school board meeting where Fine showed up unannounced to deliver a sobering message.

“You are beyond financial trouble, and you are in fiscal distress,” he and superintendent. “If you were a private business, you would now be out of business.”

Less than a month later, the board and . 

“Parents were extremely frustrated and upset by the news of the budget deficit,” said Sherrill Knox, an Ojai native and former assistant superintendent who took over as the district’s new chief this month. The crisis, she added, was “nestled in an ongoing, long-term issue of the need to downsize our district.”

While Ojai was an extreme case, Fine said is affecting districts statewide, and smaller school systems can quickly downgrade from financial difficulty to fiscal distress. He largely blames “inadequately trained” school board members. 

“In most cases, it’s stupid governance and leadership that got them into this spot,” he said, “and it will be good governance that gets them out.”

There’s one hitch: According to , districts are already spending, or planning to spend, almost a quarter of funds from the American Rescue Plan on facilities and operations.

“Getting clarifications and new restrictions this late in the game is tough on [districts],” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. “What happens if money is already approved and spent before these recent” guidelines were released?

The department was especially pointed about using federal dollars to build and upgrade sports facilities. The school district, for example, paid for new athletic fields and the in Alabama renovated weight rooms

Such expenses would not be allowed unless districts can connect the project to COVID preparedness and response, the document said. “It is unclear, for example, how constructing a swimming pool is related to the pandemic,” according to the department.

The Milwaukee district declined to comment on its use of funds for athletics-related projects, while the Wisconsin Department of Education said it is still reviewing the guidance to “determine next steps.” Alabama officials did not respond to requests for comment.

With billions in COVID relief funds for schools still unspent, school finance experts say the guidance could confuse district leaders who have been waiting for the guidance for months. But with it dropping before the holidays, it could be well into January before states offer webinars or other opportunities to explain it to districts.

The document is not law, but says leaders should be prepared to justify how their projects relate to the pandemic. The has picked up this fall, according to Roza’s tracking of expenditures. A recent survey from , however, showed that over 40% of those responding said they were struggling to navigate compliance standards related to spending the funds. 

In March, the department schools Superintendent Richard Woods that it was OK for districts to use the money to cover rising fuel costs. The new guidance doesn’t specifically address that scenario and only gives expenses “related to improving indoor air quality” as an “acceptable” example. 

Department officials told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ that the newest information is consistent with past guidance and that they have always “urged caution around long-term facilities and capital expenditures.” They said whether an expense is allowable is still up to state officials. 

“It really isn’t our role to ensure that states are looking at every single situation in the exact same way because … the context matters,” the official said.

Still, Elleka Yost, director of advocacy for the Association of School Business Officials International, said the “tone” of the document bothers her.

“The quality of school facilities impacts student health, well-being, attendance, engagement and learning,” she said. “Investing funds in facility improvements should be seen as part of a district’s strategy to recover from the pandemic and improve student learning rather than as something contradictory or unessential to achieving those goals.”

Some district leaders have made the case for spending relief funds on athletic facilities by saying they .

Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director for AASA, the School Superintendents Association, that instead of providing flexibility for districts with classroom additions going up or extensive renovations already underway, the department chose to “criticize these decisions and chastise districts for these expenditures.”

The department provided no more details in response to the requests for extensions on spending the funds that came from AASA and , but said it will lay out a process “at a later date.”

Districts worried about obligating the money by the 2024 deadline could pay ahead for services delivered over multiple years; the document lists a software license as an example. But it also warns that this practice is “not good stewardship” of federal funds.

Teachers and parents

Since the American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021, experts like Roza have also cautioned districts against using the funds for teacher and staff pay raises because it would be hard to continue covering those higher costs when the money runs out. 

But the guidance notes that the funds can be used for “permanent salary increases.” Austin Reid, senior legislative director for federal education policy at the National Conference of State Legislatures, finds that advice puzzling, given talk of a .

“Funding full roles or permanent salary increases can still be a risky bet by local districts, especially given the uncertainty in the economy,” he said.

Paying parents incentives to ensure their children go to school, on the other hand, is off the table, according to the department, which called attendance a “mandatory activity.”

“This one frustrated me, in part because we have a massive problem with chronic absenteeism,” Roza said. “Seems like we shouldn’t be invoking the notion that school is mandatory so soon after school became un-mandatory when it shut down for a year.”

That’s why some school finance experts are urging districts to redirect some of their plans for federal relief funds toward learning recovery before that money is actually spent. 

“From our perspective, a pivot does seem warranted,” Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said last week . While it’s normal for districts to get assessment results after they’ve finalized their budgets, this year, she added, the achievement gaps are “more glaring.”

Her team’s analysis of National Assessment of Educational Progress data, released last month, showed that almost 2 million middle and high school students — who would have scored in the proficient range if the pandemic hadn’t occurred — are now below proficient. 

And about 700,000 students “fell out of advanced level in math,” said Chad Aldeman, policy director at Edunomics. “This means 700,000 fewer future scientists, engineers, data and medical experts … that are now not in our pipeline.” 

While district budgets include costs that are already “locked in,” such as salaries and signed contracts, Roza noted that districts still have some “wiggle room” to redirect funds toward more academic interventions if positions haven’t been filled. And when they’re negotiating contracts with afterschool providers they can require staff to spend time on math — or other areas where students have fallen far behind. Her comments followed a from McKinsey & Company showing that districts have yet to spend $130 billion of the $190 billion in federal relief funds they received.

Amending an approved budget is not part of a district’s normal cycle, Roza said. But superintendents and school board members can request it. State education agencies can also require districts to report what they’re doing to address specific content areas, which might prompt a budget revision. 

And while state lawmakers can’t tell districts how to spend relief funds, they can districts to offer certain types of programs, like tutoring or summer school. Based on recent state test score trends, Austin Reid, senior legislative director for federal education policy at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said he expects to see similar actions when legislatures reconvene next year. 

“I also think we may see more legislatures engaging in more oversight activities on [relief funds], which may include strong encouragement of certain strategies,” he said.

Chris Neale, assistant commissioner for federal relief programs at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said he’s seen several districts reopen their budgets after they’re finalized. While he doesn’t know the exact reasons, he said it’s “plausible” that assessment data is prompting the revisions. Other factors are likely, including “emergent needs for mental health services,” he said.

The ‘constraints’ on spending

Using available financial data, Roza highlighted districts — including Baltimore County, Dallas and Miami — that are prioritizing math instruction.

A lot of districts are spending the one-time funds on teacher training — more than 80 of the top 100 districts, according to . In Oregon, for example, lawmakers and advocates to spend the funds on training teachers on elementary reading instruction, with the argument that it would have a long-term payoff. But Roza said professional development wouldn’t necessarily offer an immediate benefit to students.

The McKinsey report estimated that about $20 billion in relief funds might go unspent because of “administrative hurdles,” staff shortages and the inability of leaders to “orchestrate spending.”

Districts, meanwhile, are still waiting on the U.S. Department of Education to answer two questions: Will they have more time beyond the September 2024 deadline to fully obligate the billions of dollars in relief funds remaining from the American Rescue Plan? And are there additional “allowable uses” for relief funds that the department has yet to clarify?

“I have a lot of empathy for states and districts that are figuring out the best way to spend [relief funds] within the constraints they have,” said Sheara Kvaric, co-founder of Federal Education Group, a law firm specializing in federal education policy. “I think states and districts have innovative ideas, but it’s hard to commit to them without the assurance the spending is ok.”

Congress has joined education organizations in asking the department to allow districts to keep spending the money through the end of 2026, instead of January 2025. In , six House Democrats asked the department to issue guidance “given the crucial need to meet the immediate needs of students and to address the long-term impacts of the pandemic on academic growth and student mental health.”

Last week, the department also responded to a July letter from the AASA, The School Superintendents Association, with the same request. James Lane, senior adviser to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, reminded the organization that 96% of the first round of relief funds from 2020 has been spent and that future extensions would be considered “under extraordinary, case-by-case circumstances.” He said an updated document on allowable uses would be coming soon.

Sasha Pudelski, AASA’s director of advocacy, said the letter wasn’t much of a response.

“It’s the same as before,” she said, “no answers, no process, no helpful information for districts and states.”

The delay is significant, experts say, because points to a direct correlation between the closures and lost learning.

Of the nation’s 25 largest districts, those that were in remote learning for at least half of the 2020-21 school year have spent an average of roughly 15% of their relief funds from the American Rescue Plan. 

compiled by the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University shows that Los Angeles Unified, where schools stayed closed until April 2021, didn’t start spending any of its $2.5 billion until this fall. And the Chicago Public Schools, which reopened the same month, has spent just over 6% of almost $1.8 billion.

“What opportunities might we be missing for kids to catch up?” asked Jana Wilcox Lavin, CEO of Opportunity 180 in Las Vegas, where the Clark County School District never fully reopened that year. The nonprofit helped gather ideas from the community on how to use the funds, but the district has so far spent less than a quarter of it. Parents, she said, “can’t point to where they see that money showing up in the classroom.”

The dire consequences of school closures were reinforced last week when the National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed sharp declines for 9-year-olds in reading and math since 2020.

From the moment the U.S. Department of Education began distributing $122 billion in relief funds in March 2021, officials emphasized the need to act swiftly to help students make up lost ground.

“It’s hard to argue with the importance of addressing lost instructional time for all students,” Roberto Rodriguez, the department’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development, told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. “We want to see these dollars put to work now.”

But some districts haven’t spent the first dollar, much less the minimum 20% specifically spelled out for academic recovery.

The sluggish pace has caught the attention of House Republicans, who last month sent Education Secretary Miguel Cardona asking how districts are using the funds to “remedy the acute learning losses brought on by prolonged school closures.” Experts expect the tempo to pick up this fall, but education groups are with the department to stretch the to the end of 2026.

The disconnect is frustrating for parents and local politicians seeking evidence the money is being used to boost student performance.

The reopened on time in the fall of 2020. But as in many urban districts, high percentages of Black and Hispanic families So far, the district has spent just 6.8% of its $804 million.

“We’re going to get to the end of the next two years and nothing is going to look different for the school system,” said Sue Deigaard, a Houston school board member. “We’re not, so far, demonstrating consistency of any result, nor do I even see the dollars being spent in a way that looks particularly strategic and targeted.”

She points to from the 2021-22 school year showing that third graders not only didn’t reach the district’s literacy goal, but performance actually dropped between winter and spring.

District leaders insist they’re not just sitting on their hands. Projects have been bogged down in supply chain delays and staff vacancies have been difficult to fill. Changes in leadership have also taken a toll: Among the 25 largest districts, 16 have lost at least one superintendent during the pandemic.

While superintendent turnover might not change a district’s spending plan, it can have a “cascading impact,” said David Rosenberg, a partner at Education Resource Strategies, which advises districts on budget issues. 

Staff vacancies and burnout can drag down even the “highest-functioning and most stable district teams,” he said. “Layer in superintendent turnover and potential turnover at the level below them and the work gets even more complicated.”

Houston, which superintendent Millard House II has led for about a year, is one district experiencing such churn. 

Click here to view full chart.

August Hamilton, special assistant to House, said he’s grateful for the federal funds. But he doesn’t hold out much hope students will make rapid gains.

“I think we have to understand that you have first graders who never went to pre-K, never went to kindergarten — a first grader who’s now being asked to take a [state] test in 3rd grade,” he said. “That is going to be the challenge of this work. It’s a long time to have virtual instruction.”

That’s one reason, he said, why the district moved $6.1 million in relief funds to aid the academic recovery of its neediest students this year. Officials said they no longer needed that money for masks and other COVID mitigation strategies.

‘Backfilling’ budgets

To pinpoint spending patterns, ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ reviewed relief fund data from the and checked it against state figures. Districts provided details on when they fully reopened five days a week in 2020-21 — if they did. And the , led by Brown University economist Emily Oster, offered additional data on the extent to which districts remained open, closed or in hybrid mode.

Districts generally haven’t made it easy to track how the money is being spent. Some states, like California,  how their districts are spending the 20% targeted specifically for learning loss. But most do not. 

New York state doesn’t post any information on relief fund spending. The Georgetown lab had to use a public records request to get any data, according to director Marguerite Roza. That showed that New York City, the nation’s largest school system, had spent none of its $4.8 billion. A spokesman for the district, which is tied up in  over its budget, declined to give an actual figure and called it a “moving number.” 

The halting pace ignores what researchers say is needed to lift performance in high-poverty districts that spent most of 2020-21 online. The authors of a May said districts need to spend all of their American Rescue Plan funds on extra instruction to help students recover — not just the 20% the law requires. The longer they wait, the authors wrote, the greater the “implications for future earnings, racial equity and income inequality.”

Districts closed the longest have also seen the most enrollment loss. On average, enrollment in those districts has fallen by 4.4%, according to from the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Because state funding is tied to enrollment, some are now “backfilling” budgets with relief dollars to make up for the losses, said Roza. In fact, she expects spending partly for that reason. 

“In the ones that were closed longer, it’s been harder to get kids to come back,” she told ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ. She points to districts such as the Seattle Public Schools, which plugged federal funds into its last year, and the , which described its use of relief dollars as an effort to “ensure continuity of existing programs and services.” 

In Los Angeles, enrollment fell almost 6% this year and is expected to drop below a year from now. The district waited to dip into its $2.5 billion because it still all it received from the first two rounds of federal aid, said board member Tanya Ortiz-Franklin. 

Statewide, California schools were among the last to bring students back in person. Unlike some governors, California’s Gavin Newsom didn’t order schools to reopen. 

Click here to view full chart.

Several districts in the state never resumed in-person instruction that spring, and some have yet to spend any of their funds from the March 2021 bill. They include the Simi Valley Unified School District, where Ron Todo, associate superintendent of business and facilities, said the district is hanging on to its $13.8 million for now. The deadlines to spend the earlier relief funds are more pressing, and the newest grant, he said, has a “longer shelf life.” 

Roza has heard such explanations before. But Congress designed the third round of funding to be different from earlier relief bills: It appropriated almost twice as much as the other packages combined and specifically required districts to address learning loss.

Districts “should be well into” spending it by now, she said.

Under the legislation, districts have to obligate the funds by September 2024, and have through March 2026 to spend them. But Roza asked, “If the money was intended to get kids back on track, why wait two years?”

Education advocacy groups, like AASA, the School Superintendents Association, want the department to extend that deadline until the end of 2026. 

“I definitely have concerns about spending it all in time — not just for the practicality of getting it done,” Ortiz-Franklin said, “but also strategically to best serve our students’ short- and long-term academic and social-emotional recovery.”

Extending the timeline has political ramifications, Roza said during a recent .

“The accusation will be that we didn’t really need it, or at least if you needed it, you’re not even spending it on the kids that were impacted in the pandemic because they got older and they graduated,” she said. 

In Simi Valley, Todo said his district plans to use the funds this school year for additional elementary counselors, social workers and intervention teachers to help students who have fallen behind. But a plan to get math teachers to work an extra class period met with resistance. 

“We have teachers who have survived the pandemic, and they are too tired to be in the classroom an extra hour,” he said. Despite the exhaustion, Todo added, he sees a benefit to the current spending deadline: “When there is at least a healthy sense of urgency, we push ourselves a little harder.”

Teacher turnover rates are actually about the same as they were before the pandemic, according to through the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. Flush with pandemic relief money and faced with the generational challenge of fostering learning recovery, school districts are hiring for more positions and leaving vacancies open for longer.

A wide-ranging analysis of employment trends from national and state-level sources, the brief does confirm that the K-12 workforce shrank significantly after the onset of COVID-19 and its disruptions to schooling. After roughly a half-decade of steady growth, total public school jobs decreased by roughly 9% through May 2020. The initial drop represented more than twice the number of positions erased during the financial crisis of 2008. 

But the data also suggested that those positions were disproportionately cut from non-teaching ranks. Occupational records from both national and state sources showed measured declines among nurses, administrative support staff, paraprofessionals and other predominantly non-instructional employees. Across all the states included in the study, there was actually generally less teacher turnover during the summer of 2020 — likely the residue of that year’s severe economic slowdown, which discouraged many from leaving their jobs. (During the summer of 2021, seven of those states saw an average turnover increase of 1.2 percentage points, effectively bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels.)

Confusion about the state of the education field has emerged due to a lack of consistently reported data on millions of school employees, the authors argue. In fact, the report was only made possible by combining several overlapping federal data sets — each with its own liabilities — with additional findings from 16 states that publicly reported annual statistics on turnover through the first year of the pandemic.

Matthew Kraft, a Brown economist and the paper’s lead author, said he was “very concerned” about the increased burnout teachers reported experiencing over the last few years. While a true mass exodus of educators hasn’t yet occurred, Kraft said that profession-wide exhaustion could someday trigger one. But he added that short-term instability in the education workforce has “obfuscated” longer-term issues of working conditions and public funding that demand more thorough examination.

“There’s no doubt that this story [of educator dissatisfaction and turnover] is catching our national attention, and it’s generating headlines,” Kraft said. “The problem is that most of those stories are asking a question for which there is a nuanced response, and nuance isn’t communicated effectively in our sound-bite world.”

Kraft and his co-author, Joshua Bleiberg, culled figures from four surveys conducted by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, each collecting regular reports from tens or hundreds of thousands of employers in both the private and public sectors. That information allowed them to not only generate month-by-month estimates of the total number of elementary and secondary education jobs, but also form a clearer view of the large swings in hirings, resignations and layoffs between March 2020 and May 2022.

The pair supplemented that picture with files from 16 state education agencies — though these additions were complicated by the states’ differing definitions of turnover. For the purposes of their study, Kraft and Bleiberg described it as the percentage of teachers in one school year who did not return to the same school or district in the next year.

One possible explanation for the vacancies that did linger was a period of weak job growth after schools were closed in spring 2020. According to one federal survey, K-12 and higher education institutions collectively hired 32,000 fewer educators per month over the first six months of the pandemic. That belt-tightening was likely caused by worries that the austerity measures of the last global economic downturn would be repeated, Kraft remarked.

“We had lived through the lessons of the Great Recession, which substantially cut education funding over multiple years and led to hundreds of thousands of teachers being laid off,” he said. “So schools were cautious, and I think rightly so, about filling positions even from natural turnover.”

After the slashed budgets of the 2010s, few if any observers predicted the federal government would allocate nearly $200 billion in pandemic relief to American schools. If that understandable misapprehension guided decisions during the early phases of the crisis, a general absence of accurate, real-time data has further clouded the picture ever since. 

The deficiencies of public data sources are several, Kraft and Bleiberg note. Some surveys don’t clearly differentiate among K-12 employees, such that job additions or attrition among non-instructional staff can be conflated with those affecting teachers. Others make it hard to differentiate between public K-12 schools and private institutions (or even colleges and universities). And as with virtually all data regularly collected by the government, figures are subject to serious revisions even months after their initial publication. 

Chad Aldeman is the policy director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, a research group that studies education finance. In an email to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, Aldeman called national teacher employment data “at best a patchwork quilt of federal, state and local databases, much of it several years old.” That disorganization makes it difficult to answer even basic questions, such as how many job openings exist throughout the nation’s K-12 schools and which specific positions principals and superintendents are hiring.

In normal circumstances, that kind of opacity paves the way to misguided policy choices. But at a time of unprecedented tumult in the labor market, it might come at the cost of critical, one-time resources that could otherwise be spent helping students climb back from years of lost learning. Aldeman said he was aware of cases in which districts were poaching from their neighbors, or even cannibalizing their own workforce, to fill specialist roles.

“I don’t think state and federal policymakers are taking these data gaps seriously,” he wrote. “Instead, states seem to be spending their own money blindly, and I don’t see many thoughtful plans to track the spending alongside student outcomes to make sure the increased staffing levels actually translate into better services for students.”

Kraft said that public confusion over the nature of teacher shortages is a serious concern, pointing to showing higher vacancy rates at high-poverty or predominantly minority schools. The difficulties those schools face in hiring, and the increased stress suffered by their staff, are persistent problems that call out redress through higher pay and better working conditions, he argued; misbegotten narratives based on incomplete information could only make them harder to solve.

“We are failing these communities by failing to understand the nature of the problem, Kraft said. “And by failing to understand the nature of the problem, we may well diagnose it incorrectly and prescribe remedies that fail to address the underlying, structural inequities.”

In my day job as an education researcher, I know that too many kids never learn to read well. Kids who don’t learn to read fluently by 3^rd grade as the material gets more complex. 

That fact hit home this spring when I noticed my 8-year-old son had picked up a bad reading habit at school. When he came to a word he didn’t recognize, he would guess. 

Rather than sounding out the word and breaking it down into parts, he looks at the first letter or considers other context clues and then tries to guess. Sometimes he looks to me for confirmation and takes his eyes off the page. If I step in to tell him he got it wrong he’ll just try again, without even looking back down. 

As a parent, this process drives me crazy. You can’t read without looking at the words! I also know this guessing strategy is not going to serve him well as he encounters more challenging texts. 

My wife and I are working with my son to slow down, sound out unfamiliar words and use his finger to track his reading. He’s getting better. 

But these problems are not unique to my kid or his neighborhood school in suburban Virginia. Many schools continue to rely on literacy programs that encourage these practices. Meanwhile, reading scores were declining even before COVID-19 hit, and school closures only made things . 

All this led me to start a new initiative to help parents establish positive reading habits from the beginning—before bad habits have time to take root. I’m calling it . 

Read Not Guess will start with a 30-day challenge to help parents get their kids ready to start the next school year strong. It’s free and open to all, and parents who sign up will receive a daily email with a short lesson. The lessons, which run from July 18 to Aug. 19, are meant for busy families and should take only five to 10 minutes to work through. 

I designed the Read Not Guess summer learning challenge to serve parents who want to help their kids but don’t know how or who just need some extra guidance. It will combine the best of a good phonics instruction book plus friendly nudges and regular encouragement, delivered in bite-sized lessons over email. 

By the end of the challenge, children will understand that English is read left to right, be able to identify and sound out the most common phonemes (letter sounds), begin blending those sounds into words, and start reading complete sentences. Parents will gain a deeper understanding of phonics; practice talking to their child about reading; and learn tools, games and assessments to monitor their child’s reading progress going forward.

Why should parents do all this work? Can’t they just rely on the schools to teach their kids to read? It’s been hard to be a parent through the pandemic, and it might be tempting for parents to take it easy this summer. 

But with many schools still in various stages of upgrading their reading curriculum, some classrooms may still be teaching legacy programs that encourage guessing, even though the good readers can sound out difficult words. Parents do not need to shoulder the full burden, but they can play an active role in building good habits and monitoring their child’s progress. Even relatively  parent interventions can lead to big literacy gains for children, especially the most disadvantaged. — like what Read Not Guess will offer — have even more promising results. 

Summer is a time for barbecues and swimming pools. But while school is out and the kids are at home, summer also presents an opportunity for parents to step in and help their children learn to read — not guess. It’s too important to leave to chance.

This article was written and published while the author was with Edunomics Lab at McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

But new studies are filling in the holes. We now know that closing schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic harmed students academically. A recent paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) demonstrates that , especially for Black and Hispanic students, those in poverty, or those who were behind grade level to start with. 

It may be obvious, but disadvantaged students who learned less will need more help going forward. 

So just how much help will students need? We used the results from the NBER paper to that estimates the learning losses in more than 8,000 school districts across the country. We plugged in student demographic information and data on the mode of instruction from the American Enterprise Institute’s . District leaders can use “The Calculator” to estimate the level of student learning loss in their schools. 

For example, Seattle Public Schools was fully remote for three-quarters of the 2020-21 school year. Given the makeup of its student body, the available research would estimate that the average district student lost an average of 17 weeks of learning in math and 10 weeks in reading. Some lost more; some lost less.

Our calculator also compares the estimated learning losses with how much money a district would need to spend to remedy them. We used available research on the effect sizes of tutoring (a high-impact investment) to estimate those costs. Based on our calculations, Seattle leaders would need to invest approximately $105 million to address the learning losses in their community. 

Fortunately, Congress has provided school districts with three rounds of federal relief funds totaling $190 billion. In the last round, Congress directed districts to spend at least 20 percent of their funds to address student learning loss. In Seattle, the third round of relief funds totaled $93 million; that’s money the district can use to help get students back on track—if spent effectively.

In general, the highest-poverty districts suffered the largest learning losses, but they also received the most money from the federal government. Detroit students, for example, lost an estimated 17 weeks of learning, but the district received more than $800 million in the last round of federal funds. 

Wealthier communities received less in federal support, so they may have to dip into their own funds to address the academic losses in their schools, especially if their schools were closed longer. For example, Fairfax, Virginia, is one of the in the country. But the district kept its schools closed for half a year, and its students suffered losses equivalent to 16 weeks of learning in math and 11 weeks in reading. To make up for that, we estimate the district will need to invest approximately $343 million, substantially more than it received in federal relief funds. 

Our estimates are projections based on large-scale analysis and effect sizes from prior years, which amount to just that—a best available guess in the absence of actual data on each district’s students. Districts should be monitoring their own data in real-time to see if students are making progress. The state of Tennessee, for example, earlier this month sharing the progress that their students were making, likely in response to the investments made there in tutoring and other supports. Meanwhile, places like and are still seeing very large declines in student performance compared to where students were pre-pandemic. 

We should all care that school districts help students recover the learning time they lost. The research on past educational disruptions suggests that short-term interruptions to schooling can have long-lasting effects on kids. Even 1-3 months of learning losses can interrupt future learning, graduation rates, and persistence in college and careers. We know these gaps will have permanent impacts on students’ lifetime earnings. One estimate pegged the scale of the losses at $2 trillion. Still other studies have connected missed learning time to increased rates of physical disability and a greater reliance on government welfare. 

Schools don’t have much time to fix these holes. Students are getting older. For those who are academically behind previous generations, district leaders need to invest wisely to address these gaps in learning. Our concerns are that some districts aren’t yet tackling these losses in ways that meet the magnitude of the problem. In Los Angeles, for instance, the district has negotiated as a remedy for what the calculator computes as losses of 22 weeks in math and 18 weeks in reading. That won’t cut it. 

The good news? Most districts still have . Rather than wasting time rehashing the school reopening debate, we need district leaders to take stock of where their students are, and invest their dollars now in ways that work for students to recover those math and reading losses.

Social distancing, masks and confining students to their classrooms caused an “explosive amount of mental health needs,” from lack of focus to outright aggression, said Heather Long, a former counselor in the Orange East Supervisory Union district.

“I started to watch as more and more restrictions were being placed on kids,” she said. “I felt like I couldn’t reach the needs.”

That feeling of helplessness is one reason Long left her job in December — joining others who’ve stepped away from traditional schools and transitioned to alternative education models during the pandemic. Now she’s running a microschool out of her New Hampshire home as part of Prenda, a network of tuition-free, small-group programs in six states. Teachers making the leap into such programs are finding parents willing to join them. 

“For the first time in their lives, they have options,” said Jennifer Carolan, a former teacher in the Chicago area and now a partner with Reach Capital. The investment firm supports online programs and ed tech ventures, such as , with thousands of online classes, and , a tutoring platform that states and districts have adopted using federal relief funds.

Traditional schools, Carolan said, haven’t kept pace with what teachers want in the workplace, particularly flexible schedules. And after a “hellish two years,” some are gravitating toward positions that personalize learning for students while offering a better work-life balance.

Prior to the pandemic, schools lost about 16% of their teachers each year, according to . This year, point to scores of burned-out teachers who say they are planning to leave the field and anecdotal reports of mid-year departures. Rand Corp. data from last year showed that long hours, child care responsibilities and COVID-related health concerns were the main factors.

Traditionally, about two-thirds of teachers have moved into other jobs in K-12. Staying at home to care for a child or other family member is the second most common reason. But since the pandemic, many are also finding positions — often related to education.

With no hard national data yet available on teacher departures this year, experts say there’s no evidence of a mass exodus.

But there are signs in some states and districts that predictions of increased turnover are well-grounded. , for example, turnover rates were 17% higher in the fall of 2021 than in 2020, and in the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, of teachers and other licensed staff are well above pre-pandemic levels. 

The question is whether microschools and similar models will continue to be a viable alternative for those leaving district schools. Chad Alderman, a policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University who follows trends in the teacher workforce, is skeptical they are sustainable. 

“If even a few kids age out or move or just opt for a different placement, that would put the microschool at risk,” he said. “Absent some sort of consistent funding stream, they would face economic pressure to either grow into a more traditional school or else cease operations.” 

Data last year from , a consulting organization, showed that many families who left districts for pods and microschools were sticking with the model. At the start of the pandemic, some experts warned that pods and microschools would only , drawing well-off families who could afford the cost. States such as Arizona and New Hampshire have since provided public funding to increase equity. And some networks focus on diversity, such as — a platform that matches families with microschool teachers and attracted $8 million from investors last year.

‘A second shot’

Some teachers searching for new options have applied for jobs with Sora Schools, a private, online program now in its third year and serving 150 students, mostly on the East Coast. The school’s founders plan to expand in the fall of 2023 and eventually add in-person sites.

“The ground is fertile,” said Garrett Smiley, the company’s co-founder. 

Several of the school’s teachers — called “experts” — joined the program during the pandemic and he gets a few hundred applications for each open position. The application of Angela Anskis, who learned about Sora on LinkedIn last summer, stood out. 

She was teaching in a Philadelphia charter school, Boys Latin, when she began weighing a move. The school — and other public schools where she worked — didn’t offer students the choice to study what interested them, she said. After the school reopened, she found herself writing the same lesson plans for history, civics and geography that she always had.

“Once you’re teaching the same thing over and over and over again it’s hard to be passionate,” she said. “I would dread going into school. I thought that was part of being an adult.”

Anskis always wanted to be a teacher. As a kindergartner, she drew pictures of her future classroom. But returning to school after remote learning, she felt boxed in and considered leaving education completely. Sora, she said, gave her a “second shot.”

Sora educators are allowed to either focus full time on curriculum design or work directly with students — one difference that attracts teachers tired of spending nights and weekends on lesson plans, Smiley said. Experts teach six-week “expeditions” — deep dives into topics in multiple subject areas. 

A humanities expert, Anskis has taught a unit on fashion history and blended English and current events into an expedition on . Class discussions focused on “And Tango Makes Three,” about two male penguins raising a chick, and “Maus,” a graphic novel on the Holocast that was recently . Students researched why some groups might be opposed to the books and read the banned titles with their parents’ permission. 

Class sizes are small — 10 to 12 students — and Anskis said she can take a walk when she wants. 

“I have so much more control over my life,” she said.

But not every teacher who has left the classroom during the pandemic set out to pursue new opportunities. Some felt pushed out.

Shatera Weaver was the dean of culture at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School, a New York City public school in Queens, where worked as an adviser for middle and high school students.

Originally granted an exemption from the city’s vaccine mandate because she has sickle cell anemia, Weaver learned in October that her accommodation would not be renewed. She was among the 1,400 New York City employees without pay because they were unvaccinated. 

Now she’s designing curriculum for EL Education, a nonprofit that provides English language arts materials and teacher training. She also teaches yoga for a nonprofit, and strangely finds herself leading movement classes for young children in a public school. 

“I have been quite unhappy. I miss my purpose-fulfilling job, and feel guilt for leaving — though it was out of my control,” she said. “I do not enjoy working from home. I miss the in-person connection and collaboration.”

Weaver hopes to join those who have launched new schools and wants to design either a public or private program for Black students — “much like an HBCU, but the grade school version.”

Teachers in alternative models said they appreciate the freedom to bring their own interests and personality to instruction. Long, in New Hampshire, took her six students — including her own two children — on a ski trip during the winter. Her program includes outdoor excursions for science and nature writing.

“I feel passionate about the ability to try new things and not be shot down,” she said. 

This fall, she’s joining a former middle school science teacher to expand the program to 15 children. And she refers other teachers to informational sessions on Prenda, which the state supports through . 

“I don’t want to turn families away,” she said, “and I don’t want to be the Prenda monopoly in town.”

Join ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ and VELA Education Fund for a virtual conversation about why teachers leave the classroom to launch nontraditional education programs Wednesday, June 15, at 1 p.m. ET. .

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides funding to the 74 and the VELA Education Fund, which has supported Prenda.

A year after the nation’s schools experienced a historic decline in enrollment, new data shows that many urban districts are still losing students, and those that rebounded this year typically haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Whether families withdrew to enroll their children in online charters, school them at home or fled to far-flung suburbs with more affordable housing, the pandemic has triggered population shifts that could change the composition of U.S. school districts for years to come.

Data from Burbio, a company that tracks COVID-related education trends, offers the first look at the degree to which states and districts have recovered from a punishing year of lockdown and remote learning. Out of 40 states and the District of Columbia, few have seen more than a 1% increase compared to 2020-21, when some states experienced declines as high as 5%.

Flat enrollment this year “means those kids did not come back,” said Thomas Dee, an education professor at Stanford University. “Parents were making these enrollment decisions last summer. There was still a great deal of uncertainty. Parents wanted stability for their kids.”

shows that last year’s losses were concentrated in the early grades. Those who opted not to enroll their young children in public schools last year, or found an in-person option somewhere else, might never return for middle or high school, Dee said. 

While enrollment in many of the nation’s urban districts was already shrinking before the pandemic, school closures and economic upheaval forced many families to make decisions they might have put off otherwise.

Barring further pandemic disruptions, student population trends will likely return to their pre-COVID pace, Dee said, but added, “The effects of the sharp, recent enrollment declines may be long-lived. The fiscal consequences will remain for some while.”

New York experienced the sharpest decline, a 2% drop — more than 48,000 students — since last year. That’s on top of the previous year’s 3% decline. Enrollment in Florida saw the biggest bounce at 4%, or more than 111,000 additional students — a reflection of higher birth rates, job growth and fewer COVID restrictions under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, experts say. 

Of the 10 largest districts in the nation, only Florida’s Orange and Hillsborough counties, home to Orlando and Tampa respectively, saw enrollment surpass pre-pandemic figures.

“Florida was continuing to grow when other states came to a plateau,” said Susan MacManus, a political scientist from the University of South Florida. “Things were open and you could still work.”

State data offers a glimpse of what will likely be further enrollment growth in Arizona, Florida and Utah — states with more affordable housing, growing tech sectors and outdoor living that became an important draw during COVID. At the same time, fewer people are moving to the Northeast from other states and countries, citing . 

District-level figures — provided exclusively by Burbio to ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ â€” offer a richer picture of what happened to students after the pandemic began. The data, combined with state-level reports and interviews with district officials and parents, shows many urban districts lost students to growing exurbs. And some districts with no population growth added thousands of students in virtual schools.

Districts with enrollment loss could face tough decisions about layoffs and school closures in the near future. Meanwhile, smaller districts that are rapidly gaining students are struggling to hire staff and preserve the kind of close-knit environment that drew many parents in the first place.

“The pandemic kind of accelerated some of those pre-existing trends,” said Alex Spurrier, an associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a think tank. While school closures forced many parents to look for other options, housing and rental prices were also pushing families out of major metro regions. “All you have to do is go to Zillow and see the year-over-year changes,” he said.

In December 2019, Tanner and Miranda McCutchan relocated from northern California to Boise, Idaho — one of 10 metro areas that saw the most growth between 2020 and 2021, according to recent . That leaves two fewer children who will enter California’s schools in the coming years. Miranda stays home with 4-year-old Paige, who attends a Montessori preschool, and 18-month-old Emery, while her husband runs a glass company. 

“We couldn’t afford a house where we lived,” she said. “It was keep renting or move somewhere we could buy a place.”

The fiscal cliff & ‘Armageddon’

In California, Burbio collected data only from Los Angeles, Oakland and San Diego. All three saw declines, due in part to California’s high-priced . With the state’s school-age population expected to keep over the next decade, district leaders are bracing for a to their budgets.

The Oakland Unified Public Schools offers a preview of what other districts with declining enrollment and birth rates will soon confront — the painful and unpopular decision to close schools. In February, the district, which saw a 5.6% enrollment decline compared to last year, decided it would over the next two years. Four others will merge or reduce grade levels.

In the Granite School District, near Salt Lake City, enrollment fell 2.4%, down to 60,371 this year, even though the state’s overall enrollment is up. 

The district has seen a decline in birth rates and an increase in families fleeing to “cheaper areas to build larger homes within [Salt Lake County],” said Benjamin Horsley, chief of staff for the district, adding officials anticipate “leveling out around 55,000 students.” The district has already closed three schools and expects to shutter 10 to 14 more in the next five to seven years. 

Districts experiencing similar losses should have been making those tough calls before the pandemic, said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

“Federal [relief] money is delaying it a year or two, and the fact that state budgets are healthy is delaying it a year or two,” she said about closing schools. Roza advises a network of over 40 urban districts nationwide, the majority of which are shrinking. “Federal money will run out, and enrollment for some of them isn’t isn’t going to come back. These cost factors are going to just slam down on people.”

Los Angeles Unified, for example, saw a 5.9% decline this year and is expected to by fall of 2023. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said Monday that he’s not yet considering closing schools, but added that at the end of his first 100 days — in about two more months — he will discuss “technical corrections” and “belt tightening” measures to respond to the loss of students. 

He agrees with Roza about the dangers of the approaching fiscal cliff, and didn’t mince words about what would happen to the district if it didn’t turn enrollment trends around by the time federal relief funds dry up in 2024. “Armageddon,” he said. Then he added, “It’s going to be a hurricane of massive proportions.” 

The student population in the Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas, began dropping about five years ago. Superintendent Jesus Jara attributes much of the decline to the growth of charter schools. 

“The anti-charter discussion — that was in the ‘90s. They’re not going away,” Jara said. “The discussion is how are we more flexible and how we are more agile for our communities.” 

Despite declining enrollment, the district needs to build and renovate 33 schools to better serve its current population, he said. That includes breaking up some large, 4,000-student high schools to offer more “boutique” and career-focused programs to compete with charters.

‘Has not slowed down’

Districts with falling enrollment are strategizing how to keep the students they have. But accelerated growth comes with its own challenges, Roza said, putting pressure on leaders to act fast, especially if they need to recruit staff amid a nationwide hiring shortage. Schools might be “digging deeper and deeper into applicant pools” and not necessarily choosing the best candidates, she said. 

Liberty Hill Independent School District, northwest of Austin, Texas, didn’t lose students during the pandemic. Enrollment, at 5,539 last year, is now over 6,800 — a 23% percent leap. It’s a bedroom community that just got its first H-E-B, a “big box” grocery store, and is conveniently located near a toll road with easy access to Apple’s new complex near Austin. 

During the pandemic, the community “actually saw a 40 percent rise in residential home builds, and it has not slowed down,” said Superintendent Steven Snell. The district has eight schools now and will open a ninth next year. 

Parents value the district’s small-town atmosphere and the sense that educators know their families well, he said — connections that could be hard to maintain as the district adds 1,000 students a year. Meanwhile, the district has raised salaries for substitutes because of shortages, and there’s a scarcity of available bus drivers, custodians and cafeteria workers.

“When you have a salary that is causing you to live paycheck to paycheck, you’re going to jump ship for a little more money to survive,” Snell said.

Many of the enrollment swings this year reflect the success of online programs in meeting the needs of families for consistency amid the pandemic’s many disruptions.

For some virtual charters, the enrollment spike was temporary. Oklahoma’s Epic One on One, an online program, had 17,106 students in 2019-20. Enrollment roughly doubled last year and is now down to 23,156, according to state data.  

“Many parents decided to enroll their student in Epic once the pandemic hit, but it appears that trend has slowed with this year’s enrollment numbers,” said Carrie Burkhart, a spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Department of Education.

But whether parents are concerned about COVID or found that online school better suits their children, virtual programs remain in high demand. 

South Carolina’s enrollment has increased almost 2%, due in part to “skyrocketing enrollment in virtual charters,” said Ryan Brown, spokesman for the state’s education department.

The student population in the Huntsville Independent School District, about an hour north of Houston, shot up 40% this year because it operates the Texas Online Preparatory School. And in Colorado, Harrison School District 2, near Colorado Springs, began a partnership with The Vanguard School, a virtual program and one of three charter systems affiliated with the district.

“Many might see it as a public school district versus charter battle,” said Harrison Superintendent Wendy Birhanzel. “We believe this makes us stronger and responds to the needs of the community.”

Homeschooling trends

While Burbio data offers an incomplete picture of where lost students have gone, others have been trying to fill in the missing pieces. The Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey showed that homeschooling jumped from about 5% of households to the fall after the pandemic began. By the start of this school year, it had settled back down to about 7%, according to August 2021 data.

Others have left for more established private schools. Michelle Walker, an Oregon mother who became an advocate for school reopening last year, withdrew her daughter from the Canby Public Schools, near Portland. She secured a spot — and financial aid — at a private school for fourth-grader MacKenzie. She also took out a loan and received money from family to help cover tuition.

“I drive 80 miles roundtrip every day to make sure she goes to a good school,” she said. “It would take a lot for me to put her back in public schools.”

shows many other parents are following suit. According to Burbio, most districts in Multnomah County, which includes Portland, and nearby Clackamas County have seen enrollment declines this year. 

Some district leaders are still hoping to lure back students they’ve lost. The Bernalillo Public Schools, north of Albuquerque, serves families in Pueblo and Hispanic communities, including many in multi-family households concerned about COVID risk. 

The district was the last in the state to lift its mask mandate. Superintendent Matt MontaĂąo said he’s encouraged that enrollment, while still below pre-pandemic figures, has picked up slightly since last year. 

The district’s pre-K program, with 190 students at three schools, earned a five-star rating from the state education department — an accomplishment Montaño hopes will help recruit new students.

“Once we get them in our doors,” he said, “there’s no reason why they should leave us.”

That’s how long it’s been since more than half the nation’s schools crossed into the pandemic era.

On March 16, 2020, districts in 27 states, encompassing almost 80,000 schools, closed their doors for the first long educational lockdown. Within nine days, the nation’s remaining districts followed suit.

Since then, schools have reopened, closed and reopened again. The effects have been immediate — students lost parents; teachers mourned fallen colleagues — and hopelessly abstract, as educators weighed “pandemic learning loss,” the sometimes crude measure of COVID’s impact on students’ academic performance.

To mark what will soon stretch into a third spring of educational disruption, ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ spoke with educators, parents, students and researchers about what Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, called “a seismic interruption to education unlike anything we’ve ever seen.” They talked movingly, often unsparingly, about their missteps and occasional triumphs, their moments of despair and fragile optimism for the future. [You can scan through our expanding archive of testimonials right here.]

As spring approaches, there are additional reasons to be hopeful. More children are being vaccinated. Mask mandates are lifting. But even if the pandemic recedes and a “new normal” emerges, there are clear signs that the issues surfaced during this period will linger. COVID heightened inequities long baked into the American educational system. The social contract between parents and schools has frayed. Teachers are burning out.

“There are kind of two camps,” said Beth Lehr, an assistant principal of Sahuarita High School, south of Tucson, Arizona. “There’s the one camp of ‘This too shall pass,’ and then there’s the other camp of ‘Yeah, it’s going to pass, but I don’t know if I want to wait for it to.’”

But none of this was on anyone’s mind on March 16, 2020.

The World Health Organization had a pandemic only five days earlier. Two days after that, then-President Donald Trump called a . And in the Northshore School District, a system of 22,000 students northeast of Seattle, schools had already been closed for over a week. In late February, one of its schools shut for deep cleaning after an employee traveled out of the country with a family member who had become ill. The district’s closure offered a glimpse into what many thought would be a short-term disruption.

‘I realized it wasn’t science fiction’

Susan Enfield, superintendent of Highline Public Schools in Washington: A very good friend of mine who works in the called me, end of February, and said, “I think we’re going to close … and I think the rest of you won’t be far behind.” I said, “No way, there’s no way they’re going to close schools.” I mean, I really was incredulous.

Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education: I was having brunch with my sister in Kirkland, Washington, when the news broke that there were multiple cases and deaths at the Life Care Center nursing home just a few miles away. My husband sent me a text telling me to get out of Kirkland right away, and everything felt ominous.

Marguerite Roza, Seattle-based director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University: My daughter and I were driving to go pick up some fish for dinner. In the car, they announced the governor’s order — it was with a bigger lockdown kind of order — and we walked into the fish market place, and the guy behind the counter goes, “Have you heard anything yet?” We were like, “Yep.” And he goes, “What did he say?” We said, “Lockdown.” And he [grunts], “Uhhhh.” Already, the streets were pretty empty, and the first person we talked to was the guy packaging up our salmon.

Tony Sanders, superintendent, School District U-46, near Chicago: I was asked to serve on a statewide panel of superintendents … to provide guidance to school district leaders across the state. Our first meeting, held on Sunday, March 15, was attended by prominent legislators, state health officials, the deputy governor for education and state superintendent of schools. Hearing the projections of worst-case scenarios should we not “flatten the curve” was surreal. At the conclusion of that meeting, where we worked to socially distance, but had no idea yet about the need to wear a mask, I made the four-hour journey home in complete silence and disbelief.

Michael Mulgrew, president, United Federation of Teachers, New York City: We started tracking this during the Christmas holiday. We had some teachers who were in China. We had them quarantine when they came back. I didn’t realize [things had changed] until March 16, the day after the New York City public schools closed. I was in my car driving around the city and I was shocked that the streets were empty. That’s when I realized it wasn’t science fiction. 

Bridgette Adu-Wadier: freshman, Northwestern University, graduate of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandra, Virginia: By the end of March, Gov. Ralph Northam basically announced that all the schools would be closed due to the pandemic for the rest of the school year. I watched the livestream, and I was texting my friends. One of them was actually really upset and crying about it, just because it was such a stressful situation to be in — like, things are never going to be the same again.

‘We were completely unprepared’

Parents, superintendents and others — many in a state of shock — had little time to plan as events unfolded at frightening speed.

Toni Rochelle Baker: family liaison for Oakland REACH, a parent advocacy organization, Walnut Creek, California: They gave us curfews in our city and then they told us to stock up for food. I don’t live my life like that. I’m a single mother. I go grocery shopping when I can. We get what we need, and now you’re telling me to stock up on food? That was scary. I didn’t have a deep freezer. I didn’t have extra money just laying around [to] go spend $300 on food. I didn’t have Wi-Fi at the time because I didn’t really need it. I have my phone, and now I need Wi-Fi for three people.

Maria Amado, family child care provider, Hartford, Connecticut, who opened her program for school-age children during remote learning: [Translated from Spanish] Educators, including myself, sewed masks for the children, and we looked for resources to support each other. Some gave fabric to make the masks, others the elastic. It may not have been in big ways, but they all contributed. And now I remember this and think, “Where did I find the time to make the masks?” It was the adrenaline to survive, knowing this would protect me and I had to do it.

Tony Sanders: We needed to place emergency orders for Chromebooks and other devices. We had to completely transform our approach to food service so that by March 17 we were feeding our students and community at food pickup locations throughout the district. There were decisions that had to be made that I would never have thought of. We had to determine how we would ensure employees would continue to be paid. During the first days of the pandemic, I recall sitting alone in my office. The view from my window was a large parking lot with one vehicle.

Sherrice Dorsey-Smith, deputy director of programs, planning and grants, San Francisco Department of Children, Youth and Their Families: I had to figure out how we were going to open what we called emergency child and youth centers. These were spaces for essential workers to leave their children for the day while they were at work. Child care centers were closed, schools were closed, but some people needed or were required to continue working. They needed a safe place for their children during the day. I had to figure out how to get breakfast, lunch and snacks to all the sites. I remember working through the weekend nonstop, literally 48 hours.

Michael Mulgrew: It was a mad scramble to get everyone trained quickly how to get their classrooms up. How do we teach parents how to help their kids? It was non-stop. It was hundreds of decisions every day. Even though everything was closed, we were still moving stuff literally, like laptops and iPads and different things, trying to get them to our members’ houses so they had something to work off. [Former] Mayor [Bill de Blasio] had resolved never to close the schools, so he would not allow the Department of Ed to put any contingency plans in place. On the Friday before the schools closed, at 3 p.m., the mayor would be banging on the table saying he was going to keep the schools open. And that Sunday afternoon he closed the schools. So we were completely unprepared.

School, interrupted

As the deadline for lifting lockdown kept slipping away, some took longer to grasp the new reality: Life wouldn’t be returning to normal anytime soon.

Mariela Garcia: freshman at the University of Houston, graduate of Eastwood Academy High School in Houston: It was during spring break when we ended up having two weeks instead of one. And two weeks turned into three. This went on for a couple of weeks before we noticed that we weren’t going to go back to school. Stores started closing down, schools started closing, many things started closing because everyone was scared. That’s when I noticed that this was becoming very serious.

Dale Chu, senior visiting fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute: I realized everything had changed … on May 10, 2020. How do I remember the date? My at-the-time 5-year-old daughter — after nearly two months on Zoom — drew a picture of her class for me. Seeing Kellan’s classmates through her eyes on a Zoom grid really hit things home for me.

Ricardo Miguel Martinez, president, Latino Parents for Public Schools, Atlanta: I had people worried about getting kicked out, evicted, lights being turned off, not having groceries. These are people who weren’t making excuses. The people who are fighting masks and stuff, they have a choice to either follow the data or not follow the data. God bless them in their fight. But these people didn’t have a choice. They got thrown into the chicken factories and died. They got thrown into manufacturing and died so that we could have chicken at the grocery store.

Mourning the lost

Some felt the pandemic’s effects up close: sick parents, dead teachers. This month, the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. , with an estimated 2,200 of them educators. Many of the effects have been harder to measure, but are certain to leave lasting damage. Recent four out of five secondary school principals experienced “frequent job-related stress” last year, and educator surveys show over students’ mental health, including anxiety and suicidal thoughts.

Susan Enfield: We lost two middle school students to suicide early in the pandemic. We lost staff members.

Michael Mulgrew: I had to read the names of our members who passed away. I had to make the phone calls to those families. We lost a lot of members, and I always think that if we could have closed earlier, how many more would we not have lost.

Shawnie Bennett, a COVID-19 investigator, Oakland, California: I lost my brother [from COVID] in May of 2020. He was only 32. As a family, when we would gather to try and go see him or just sit outside the hospital window. We were afraid to touch each other, so it was hard to comfort each other. [My son] came home [from college] for Christmas, and he saw me so weak and broken. He had always seen a very strong Black woman as a mother. I was gone, emotionally wrecked, mentally, physically, and it broke him down to the point that he did not want to return to school. He’s in Atlanta now, got an apartment and he’s just trying to figure life out. He was very close to my brother. That loss, on top of what he physically saw me go through, was detrimental for him.

David Brown, principal, Hillcrest Heights Elementary, Prince George’s County, Maryland: Family vacations, going out to eat, visiting family — I think all of those things disappearing created a milieu where it was tough to manage. And when you’re in charge of leading a large group of individuals, how do you help and support them? How do you keep your teachers upbeat? Because the mental health of every adult who receives a paycheck from our county impacts the mental health and the wellness of children who are just simply here to learn. I remember there was discussion that we’ll be able to eat and enjoy ourselves come the 4th of July, and then that didn’t happen. You’re holding out hope that it’s going away, but it’s not, and [you’re] trying to remain that positive, invigorating leader that the principal has to be.

Bridgette Adu-Wadier: Graduation was a really tough time. I don’t remember enjoying it, honestly. Just collectively, it was like a year or so of the pandemic, and then also, my family was impacted a lot financially, which was stressful. I was basically helping my two younger brothers through virtual school for the whole year. I had a lot more family responsibilities, and it took a toll on me mentally. I had trouble balancing things, especially with Zoom class sessions while my brothers needed help or were playing loudly in the other room. I relied on music and audiobooks as a form of escape.

Ashiley Lee, tech and operations coordinator, Para Los NiĂąos, a Los Angeles charter school, where last year she taught seventh-grade history: I remember being in a class full of blank screens, because we no longer required cameras on, and then after that, putting my grades in for the semester and realizing just how low they were. I was trying to brainstorm with my team: What is something, anything, we can do to encourage our students to at least get the one assignment we post a week in by the end of the semester? My kids, it was so funny, we started a joke where I would call on a student to answer a question and they wouldn’t be there — kind of a ghost in the call. And the kids would comment in the chat, “Ghostbuster! Ms. Lee caught him.”

Marguerite Roza: The hardest part was when it looked like there was no reopening school. This was November of 2020. The governor had established these metrics by which you could open schools, and as far out as the modelers had modeled, it was never going to reopen. My then-high school daughter [a cross-country runner] was getting more and more discouraged. You could just see it was really not healthy for her, just to be home all alone every day. And you, as a parent, start to feel desperate. I used to listen to press conferences constantly. You could see that there wasn’t going to be any movement. I was very worried about her. The sports season had come and gone. School was online. I think that was probably the darkest time, which coincides in Seattle with it being really dark, [at] like 3:45. 

Mariela Garcia: Hundreds and thousands of people were dying because of COVID, and I was scared. I remember I had no interactions with the outside world for — I kid you not — at least three months straight. My family just did not want to leave our home. At the time, we had to adjust to online school. I had no Wi-Fi or laptop at the time, so it was hard to be in class and even submit assignments from my phone. It was definitely a very hard time, especially when family members started to get COVID.

Toni Baker: I had two kids at the table with computers doing virtual learning and I had no idea what that meant. They told us to sign on to some Zoom that I’ve never heard of before. I’m in love with my kids, but my kids were on my last nerves during the pandemic. Those four walls just weren’t enough.

Couch sitting, watching ‘Friends’

The monotony of being stuck at home sparked new coping strategies: Cooking, at-home workouts, walking the dog — and of course . Some took long couch breaks. Others became entrepreneurs. Mariela Garcia started baking and ran a business from a local farmer’s market.

Mariela Garcia: My family actually bought the DVD set of “Friends” and we just watched “Friends” over and over and over. We’ve already seen each episode at least 10 times. We just keep it playing throughout the whole day because we don’t have any Wi-Fi or anything at home. I would not have started my business if it wasn’t for being in quarantine. I had so much more free time. I hate being that person, but the first time I ever tried my empanadas, they came out great, and I have not changed anything. 

Susan Enfield: A group of female superintendents from around the country — we refer to ourselves as “sister supes” — had a standing Sunday afternoon Zoom where we would just check in and get together. In the early months, that proved to be incredibly helpful, just remembering that we weren’t alone. Going for walks with my husband and also, frankly, allowing myself to feel pain and to grieve. I think as leaders we do need to inspire hope and let people know it’s going to be OK and be strong, but we also have to balance that strength and courage with vulnerability. There were weekends where I didn’t get off the couch. I’ve been pretty honest about that in conversations with others. I said to someone once, “If one more person says, ‘You got this,’ I’m gonna smack ‘em.” A year and a half ago, I didn’t “got this,” and people were just lying. I’m sorry, they were just lying. I don’t think we do ourselves or our colleagues or anyone any service by faking it.

Beth Lehr, assistant principal, Sahuarita High School, Sahuarita, Arizona: I do not check my email at all on the weekends.

Toni Baker: I had a support system. They gave us vouchers for food. They gave my kids free computers. They gave us Wi-Fi. They had these teachers — I don’t even know where they found these beautiful teachers with these loving hearts for these kids. There was a teacher who had a grandma’s touch and a mom’s heart, and she was just so warm. This is through a computer. I’ve never met this woman to this day in real life. I had the community of Oakland REACH behind me. I wouldn’t have made it without them.

David Brown: When we were in person, I had “lunch bunches” where I would eat lunch with the kids. So I went back to eating lunch virtually with the kids, and I found that really gave me a lot of positive energy. You find that you are equally, if not more, excited to see them in this virtual world than they are to see you. So it’s the, “Hey, Mr. Brown.” It’s the big smile. It’s the camera coming on. It’s the home environment. It’s the parents waving in the background. I think all of that does a good amount to lift your spirits.

‘The system itself is not changing’

Confusing guidance and vitriolic debate left many parents feeling lost. They watched helplessly as their children disengaged from learning, but also worried that their kids would get sick if they returned to school. School leaders were caught in what felt like a non-stop, high-volume war of words with unions, parents and state officials. 

Pedro Martinez, CEO, Chicago Public Schools; former superintendent, San Antonio Independent School District: Texas did not prioritize teachers [for vaccines] in the first round, but they were pushing hard and threatening districts about keeping schools open. Meanwhile, the positivity rate, I remember in San Antonio, was over 21 percent. The death rate was five times higher in my district than it was in the more affluent parts of the county. I just remember the frustration. You want these things, but yet you’re not providing vaccines to my staff, who actually want to keep the schools open. 

Michael Mulgrew: The city doctors are telling us it’s going to be nothing but a cold and the schools could remain open. The kids are going to be fine. They’re not going to get it, and we’ll create herd immunity, and we’ll be safer faster than everybody else. Literally, that’s the conversation I was having with the mayor and his doctors. Our doctors are telling us the absolute opposite. They’re saying, “Listen, children might not be getting this at this point in time, but this is a serious virus and people are going to die.” The big conflict was that first one. 

Marguerite Roza: I’m a data person. I really study the numbers, and I didn’t understand how a lot of people were driven by fear and couldn’t recognize what I was seeing. [They’re saying], “Your child could die,” and I was like, “Well, not really. The numbers here say, really, your child isn’t going to die. I promise you, driving to Grandma’s is more dangerous for your kid than this thing.” You’re having two different conversations if you’re talking about numbers and you’re talking about fear. The fear was so dominant that the numbers people probably felt, out of respect, we should step back and be quiet. I don’t want to tell somebody who’s having a panic attack, “You’re overreacting.” Looking back on it, I think that I probably kept my real views about the data quieter than I should have. I thought people were going to bounce out of it.

Mariela Garcia: We were able to pick whether to go back in person or stay online. I definitely wanted to go back. I missed my friends. I missed having class with a teacher right in front of me. My parents thought it was not a good idea. I was conflicted in making a decision, but for the good of my family, I decided to stay online for my whole senior year. That also meant no sports. I was so heartbroken because sports meant everything to me. I was unable to play my senior year. I had already claimed the captain position in my previous year playing, and I was looking forward to a great season. 

Parent power

The pandemic has dramatically changed parents’ relationships with their public schools, prompting some to seek new options and others to demand more from the schools their children attend. “I think the pandemic has created some sort of awakening in parents that we’ve not seen before,” Roza said. “I don’t think there’s any putting that genie back in the bottle.” 

Wendy Neal, executive director of My Child My Voice, a Houston-based advocacy group: I’m not saying the teachers are bad, I’m just saying that the parents were finding creative ways of being more of a teacher to their own child. Some parents were like, “Well, if you’re not going to help my child, I’m pulling my kid out of your school. Either I’m going to homeschool, go to an education pod or go to a private school.” Some of these parents really didn’t believe in charter schools either, and then all of a sudden, they’re putting their kid in a virtual charter school.

Marguerite Roza: In March of 2021, [my daughter’s school] finally got around to having their cross-country season outside, and they banned all parents from coming. They run three miles. They’re outside. It just got to the point where it was eye roll upon eye roll. A lot of parents showed up anyway, ’cause how are you going to keep parents off of a three-mile course, right? And we’re popping out of the bushes waving at each other. [It had been] a year, and we knew better. I should have marched out and said, “The evidence suggests we’re fine here,” but they were going to ban you and ban your team if you weren’t cooperating.

Sonya Thomas, executive director, Nashville PROPEL, a parent advocacy group: You would think that a pandemic would bring about a sense of urgency. We’re talking about decades of educational inequities, and what I’m seeing is that the system itself is not changing. It has actually grown richer in money. It has grown more savvy in messaging. And it’s hurtful. I’ve got tears coming down my face now. I just had a friend who died this weekend. He couldn’t read. And I have to ask myself, “What has changed?” 

Toni Baker: When this school year came around, the COVID was just everywhere. The previous year, they did the COVID tests, they did the sanitizer, they did the masks, they did all these precautions. And when school started back the next semester, all of that went out the window. I let it slide the first two days of school, but by the third day, I’m like, “What’s going on? Where are the masks? Where is this? Where is that? We’re still in this stuff, and it’s worse now.” I had to make an executive decision as a parent. My kid’s class got exposed and I didn’t like the safety of it. I was worrying, like I had knots in my stomach. I had to remove my children from there. [My son’s] class went on quarantine for a week and then I just never took them back.

Beth Lehr: I have one teacher. This is her ninth year. She has already resigned for next year. She said, “I can’t do this anymore. I dread coming to work every day.” She goes, “You know, I love the day-to-day of being in front of our kids. The second I have to open my email or grade their assignments is when I realize why I resigned.” The emails. The constant onslaught of the very vocal unhappy parents. We have some amazing families, but we don’t hear the “Thank yous” as often as we hear the “You sucks.”

Lost learning

Educators love jargon. It’s not surprising, then, that lockdown introduced new terms like “COVID slide” and “pandemic learning loss” to describe the academic fallout students experienced from months of remote learning. In June 2020, researchers at nonprofit assessment group NWEA were among the first to predict the extent of the chaos. The return to in-person learning helped. But as recently as December, from McKinsey & Co. showed that academic recovery has been uneven and gaps between Black and white students have widened. Educators also report challenges with student behavior, which many to the lack of socialization during remote learning.

Beth Lehr: The learning loss is going to be there. There’s going to be a new norm, but trying to jam more and more and more down their throats is not helping. Continuing to create these high-stakes environments and making kids feel less than because of something that was totally out of their control is not helping. Meeting kids where they are is. Why do they have to learn all these things, right? They have to learn it to be successful in the future. Great, what does that success look like? How are we redefining success, because honestly, right now, for some of these kids, success is getting out of bed and showing up.

Mariela Garcia: I’ve always struggled in math, and since it was online I feel like I wasn’t really learning as much as I could. When I got to college, I took trigonometry, and it was difficult. I had to get a tutor or stay after school. I had to study more on my own time. I had to take a test in person for the first time in two years. I struggled the first couple weeks, but once I got help and once I started studying, it’s just like riding a bike.

Ricardo Martinez: Seems like we’ve already stopped talking about it. A lot of people refuse to acknowledge it. They’re trying to change the conversation to CRT [critical race theory], anti-CRT. Let’s not worry about what’s not really happening and worry about what’s actually happening. Kids are getting more aggressive. They’ve lost social skills. We’ve lost a lot of learning, and I don’t think that the parents have been able to help because we barely know how to do what they’re asking us to do. I hope that we’re talking about learning loss until we catch back up, which should be in a few years.

Beth Lehr: [Students are experiencing an] emotional stuntedness, for lack of a better term. Freshmen are notoriously immature, but what we’re used to seeing as freshman behavior isn’t even freshman behavior. The “devious licks” stuff [a TikTok challenge that included school property damage] — that was 100 percent only freshman. Oh my God, the soap dispensers were destroyed over and over and over again. We had to replace sinks. We had to replace toilets — not because they were stolen, but because they were destroyed. The older students were super-annoyed by the freshman because then we ended up having to lock our bathrooms during lunch. We’ve also had an increase in sexual infractions — not necessarily assaults. It’s consensual, but it’s much more frequent on our campus this year. This is my seventh year as assistant principal, and this year, hands down, we have had more issues with kids getting caught in positions that high schoolers should not be in.

Hosea Born, art and robotics teacher at Hope Academy of Public Service, Hope, Arkansas: We will be talking about it as long as there is the overwhelming reliance on standardized testing. The pandemic has shown us that adaptability is key, yet we are still measuring our students on how well they can take a test. Teaching a non-tested subject has allowed me to see the flexibility and amazing ways that students learn when there isn’t a looming requirement hanging over their heads. Some of my students haven’t had an art class since the start of the pandemic, but it is key for students to be able to create, and when given the opportunity, they have jumped right back in, and to me, are exceeding all expectations. 

Pedro Martinez: Last year, our district had 100,000 students who were disengaged, including seniors who would have dropped out. We got the majority of seniors to graduate. Same thing happened in San Antonio. What I heard from teachers directly was, “These kids are coming every day. These are the same students who we couldn’t get to engage in remote. They’re coming every single day.” I saw the first-quarter grades. There are still gaps, but significant improvements over the remote year, and specifically with our kids of poverty and kids of color. That gives me a lot of hope. When we have the children in our schools, they actually do perform better.

Robin Lake: I think we will grapple with [learning loss] for as long as the COVID generation is alive. We’ll be looking at the immediate impacts for probably a decade, but there are sure to be lasting effects on individuals and on the economy for many decades unless we can change the trajectory of our response. The question is how we’ll be talking about it. Will the story be that we failed this generation of children, or will it be that we pulled together and found solutions for this generation, and designed a better education system for future generations?

A ‘five-alarm crisis’ for teachers

As they looked back, some recalled moments of doubt about perservering. According to from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union, more than half of teachers intend to leave the profession sooner than they originally planned. While some are dubious about “the Big Quit,” NEA President Becky Pringle called teacher burnout and staff shortages a “five-alarm crisis.”

Michael Mulgrew: I think most people in this profession thought of quitting throughout this thing. There were some really really tough times. The only way out of this is to go through it.

Susan Enfield: I don’t think I ever thought of quitting. There were moments where I thought I don’t know if I can do this, but that’s different than quitting. I never just was like, “I’m out of here,” and my was not a response to the pandemic. I’m ready for a fresh challenge and Highline is ready for a fresh leader.

Beth Lehr: I’m so torn. I’ve applied for a principal position within the district, but at the same time I’m like, “Why? Why did I just do that? What am I thinking?” I haven’t yet gotten to the point where the stuff that I dislike about my job has outweighed the stuff that I like about it, but it’s hit or miss on a daily basis. 

‘I don’t use the term normal anymore’

Like a sequel to a bad horror movie, the Omicron variant arrived just as educators and families thought they’d made it through the worst of the crisis. The sparked a spike in cases, resulting in further school closures and quarantines. But now, with increasing vaccination rates and a recent decline in positive cases, some states are lifting mask mandates. The nation’s three largest districts aren’t ready to let masks go, but some are starting to use a word they haven’t uttered in a while: hope.

Pedro Martinez: We’re now at a point where cases have been very steadily declining. Our city is now close to an over-70 percent vaccination rate. There are still gaps within my district, but I’m seeing good momentum, especially with 5- to 11-year-olds. We’re close to maybe half of our district that should be fully vaccinated within the next couple weeks. Over 90 percent of my staff are fully vaccinated. So it really gives me hope that we’re on the other side of this. There’s a chance that by springtime we could be talking about not wearing masks.

Susan Enfield: I am hopeful that in the coming weeks and months we are going to collectively adapt to a way of living, a way of working, that will feel more familiar to what we knew prior to the pandemic. I don’t use the term “normal” anymore. I think entering that phase gives me hope.

Michael Mulgrew: The buildings built after the last pandemic have these really big windows. They actually were built that way so that you could open them to keep ventilation in case there was another pandemic. That literally became part of the code for schools after the pandemic of 1918. For a period of time last year, the teachers kept opening up the windows the whole way, and it’s like 7 degrees out. So, we had to produce this video for all the teachers about how you only have to open like half the windows about 3 inches each and you’ll be fine. One of the first cold days when we got back last month, I was in a school, and one of the teachers had windows open all the way. And I’m looking at the windows, and she touched my arm and she goes, “I know I don’t have to open it that much, but my team teacher for 20 years died of COVID a year ago.” I said, “You keep that window open any way you want.”

Shawnie Bennett: I don’t think I will ever take off my mask.

Mariela Garcia: I’ve always been the type of person to talk to anybody, but it was different seeing people that I’ve never met before [at the University of Houston]. People have been socially awkward, and it’s hard to start a conversation. With my personality, I’m a happy person and I talk to anyone. So I’m going up to someone [last fall] like, “Hi, nice to meet you,” and they’re just like, “Whoa, 6 feet apart.”

Beth Lehr: It’s so hard to see the end, and it’s so overwhelming. What I’ve heard more this year from my teachers than anything is, “We thought that last year was hard. This year is 10 times harder.” We’ve had very, very low turnover. I do not foresee that being the case next year. There are kind of two camps. There’s the one camp of “This too shall pass,” and then there’s the other camp of “Yeah, it’s going to pass, but I don’t know if I want to wait for it to.”

‘A true hunger for doing things differently’

Two years of scrambling and false starts has offered ample opportunity to think about what has — and perhaps more to the point, what hasn’t — worked for schools. If there’s another pandemic — and scientists say there undoubtedly , and soon — will anything change?

Christopher Nellum, executive director, Education Trust West: I think we now appreciate mental health in a different way. The past two years have been traumatic. We have been scared, sick, overworked, unemployed. We have missed vital human connection and even lost loved ones. We have witnessed a surge in racially motivated hate crimes and a national reckoning over police brutality toward Black and brown Americans. It’s OK to be struggling to feel OK in the face of all of that. It’s OK to talk about it. And we all deserve access to the resources we need to address it. 

Sonya Thomas: Parent engagement is not what we want. When you engage us, what you’re doing is bringing your own agenda and you’re saying, “This is what we’re going to do, so get with the program.” That’s what engagement means, right? “I’m bringing something to you, this is what you’re gonna get and you gotta just walk in line with it.” I think what they’re learning is that we’re not going anywhere and we want parent partnership. We don’t want to be engaged. Throw that in the trash. That has never gotten anything for our children. What we want is true partnership. We want school districts to partner with us, intentionally take our feedback and use it. That builds trust. It’s not a talking point or a PR move. 

Dale Chu: If anything, we’ve learned what doesn’t work. For example, asynchronous learning [without live teaching ] — homework, study hall — stunk. We also learned that huge doses of it left millions of students isolated from their peers, the toll from which we’re just starting to come to grips with.

Robin Lake: I hear a true hunger for doing things differently. People are saying, “You know, the way we ask teachers to teach alone in a classroom, trying to be expert in all things and serve vastly different needs, is crazy.” I believe there is a powerful confluence of parents, educators and civic leaders who know things have to change and are determined to make that happen.

Michael Mulgrew: We never said [remote learning] was going to be the be-all-and-end-all. It was always a way for us to keep in contact, to keep our students engaged. Through the end of that [2019-20] school year, it really was more of a lifeline between teachers and students and their families. We thought it should have been more of a centralized process, but [the department] figured it’s better off to just let every teacher do their own thing. The majority of students really do regress in a remote setting. There was a small percentage of students who actually thrived in remote, so that says there’s something there we have to look at. If there’s a subset of children who were not doing well when they were going to school — and there’s all sorts of different reasons for that — who all of a sudden did really well in a remote setting, we have to look at this going into the future.

Marguerite Roza: We have seen districts jump in and be nimble in a way that we never thought districts could be nimble before. People always say, “You know, turning a district around is like turning an aircraft carrier.” I’m like, an aircraft carrier turns around in a day. Why is everybody using that as something that’s slow? I was in the military. [From 1988 to 1992, Roza served at the Navy Nuclear Power School in Orlando.] Aircraft carriers are pretty maneuverable. There are thousands and thousands of people on an aircraft carrier, and that thing could spin around and change direction with the wind. I do think that we had thought districts couldn’t adjust, and many of them did.

Beth Lehr: I’ve had a lot of teachers really rethink their philosophies — some of my most dyed-in-the-wool [teachers]. This has truly opened their eyes when they’ve seen the disparities. Not everybody’s home looks the same. When we first started doing all of the remote, we had a lot of really serious conversations about requiring cameras to be on or not. A lot of our teachers were like, well, “Why wouldn’t the camera be on?” They never took into account that there might be 10 people in a two-bedroom house. There might be somebody being slapped, hit, cut, whatever while they’re there. They might be embarrassed because they’re doing your class from their car in the McDonald’s parking lot.

‘So long and so short’

Seven hundred days have flown by for some and painfully dragged on for others. For many, it’s been a bit of both. 

Michael Mulgrew: It feels like 7,000 days.

Laurie Corizzo, counselor, Ridge Ranch School, Paramus, New Jersey: This whole pandemic, the virus, the water cooler conversations are never-ending. If someone isn’t discussing a vaccine, a booster, the virus, who has it, who had it, who passed, it seems that conversations are stagnant. My point is, it encompasses every single aspect of our lives. It is as if there were some sort of imaginary force field that prevents any semblance of any other conversation to happen anywhere on the planet. In a word, it is quite exhausting.

Christopher Nellum: I hope that 700 days in, we are seeing our education systems for what they are and what they have been for a long, long time: profoundly inequitable.

Susan Enfield: I didn’t know that 700 days could both seem so long and so short simultaneously. I think the last couple of years have felt like a lifetime in and of themselves, and yet, at the same time, it feels like it’s gone by in a flash.

Marguerite Roza: I mean, wow — what a seismic interruption to education unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Normally, we would say a 1 percent change in enrollment from one year to the next is earth-shattering to finance. We’re seeing 3, 4, 5, 6, 10 percent enrollment shifts in some districts. And some of those are large districts. Those kinds of things are going to change the structure of education forever.

Lead Image: Rippowam Middle School principal Matthew Laskowski looks on from a socially distanced cafeteria in September 2020 in Stamford, Connecticut. (John Moore / Getty Images)

Seriously, don’t relocate across state lines, K-12 finance experts warn. Along with changing careers, it’s one of the easiest ways to lose out on your retirement savings. In all, only about one out of five teachers receive their full pensions, while roughly 50 percent don’t remain in a single pension system long enough to qualify for minimum benefits at the end of their service.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ Newsletter

Those dreary findings come from on teacher retirement systems released last month by Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit research and consulting group. Ranking each state retirement system on an A-F scale, the authors find that only a handful can claim to serve both teachers and taxpayers well: Twenty states received F grades, while none received an A.

Andrew Rotherham, one of Bellwether’s founders and a co-author of the paper, noted that a wide variety of states earned spots near the top and bottom of the list, with both Democratic- and Republican-leaning political environments scattered throughout. But across the board, he observed, the status quo in too many states punishes a wide swathe of educators.

“One of the ways this system is sustainable is that it creates millions of small losers and a much smaller number of big winners,” said Rotherham.

Chad Aldeman, a former Bellwether analyst who now serves as policy director of Georgetown University’s , said that there had been some “slow movement” in a few states to offer public employees more choice and portability in their retirement benefits, but that the intertwined issues of back-loaded pensions and colossal debts owed by states were generally going in the wrong direction.

“I would say, in broad strokes, the financial problems keep getting worse,” said Aldeman, who worked on a previous version of Bellwether’s rankings and consulted on this publication. “And the related problem about the way the benefits are structured — it’s moving in fits and starts, but it’s also getting worse.”

Bellwether’s newest report evaluates states on a “comprehensive” basis that rates how each system performs for four separate constituencies: short-term teachers (those who teach in the system for less than 10 years), medium-term teachers (those who remain within the system for 10 years but leave before retirement), long-term teachers (those who spend their entire careers in the system), and taxpayers within each state. Retirement systems in all 50 states and the District of Columbia were ranked in terms of their performance for each category, and they all received an overall score.

Grades were determined through the use of 15 separate variables, including overall funding levels, the length of the vesting period, whether teachers in the state are eligible for Social Security, required teacher contribution rates, and investment returns averaged over 10 years.

South Dakota earned the top score, 88.4 percent, while Tennessee and Washington were the only two other states to notch even B grades. Among the lowest-rated jurisdictions were a litany of red, blue, and purple enclaves: California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Louisiana, the District of Columbia, and Massachusetts, and more than a dozen others.

Those summative scores can conceal significant variation within systems, however. West Virginia, for instance, earns an overall grade of D, partly because it is one of the worst states in the country for short-term teachers (its 10-year vesting period means that huge numbers of educators won’t stay in the job long enough to earn benefits). But it lands just outside the top ten systems for taxpayers because it participates in Social Security, nets fairly high investment returns, and makes relatively high state contributions.

Among all four constituencies, short-term teachers clearly make out the worst, with 33 states and the District of Columbia earning F grades in the category. Of the rest, only five (South Dakota, Oregon, Washington, Florida, and Michigan) even rated a C or higher.

Aldeman said that the policy moves that have contributed to that reality — lengthening vesting periods, slashing benefits for newer teachers, and raising teacher contributions — can sometimes improve a given state’s budgetary picture, but they also tend to disadvantage younger employees and those who don’t stay their whole careers.

​​”When states historically have seen a big-budget bill for pension obligations, they have tended to cut benefits for new workers,” he said. “The cuts mean that newly hired workers have to stay longer to qualify for any benefit at all, have to contribute more of their own salary toward the benefits, and have to wait longer to retire and receive a lower benefit.”

Citing from the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute, which found that 39 percent of the education funding disbursed by Illinois for the coming school year will be used to pay down the state’s huge debt obligations, Aldeman professed himself “amazed.”

“I mean, you can see the trend; it just keeps going up and up. At some point, will leaders say, ‘That’s enough, we need to do something else about this’?”

‘Life happens’

Teachers in 36 states and the District of Columbia are enrolled in defined benefit pensions programs, through which they make regular contributions to their plan and receive guaranteed payments in retirement. Fourteen states have created “defined contribution” systems, often resembling 401(k) plans, which tend to vest over a shorter period of time and offer greater portability across state lines.

Rotherham argued that education policymakers should not focus exclusively on plan type in debates over how to improve their systems. Defined benefit packages — often caricatured as “gold-plated” vestiges of the mid-20th century, when many employees could expect to retire early with enviable financial security — are not necessarily financially irresponsible for states, he said, and alternative systems can sometimes fail the test of adequacy for the retirees who depend on them.

“This debate has often become very reductionist, and it’s become a debate over what should be the form of the plan — is it defined benefit or defined contribution? — rather than which elements would make it good or bad,” Rotherham said. “And that’s what we need to be talking about because for the plan participants, it’s those elements that affect their lives, not these ideological debates between 401(k)s and pensions.”

Whatever specific structure a state commits to, he said, leaders can no longer condition their retirement benefits on career-long tenures within a given system; any expectation that employees will stay in place for decades is “not a match for our labor market,” Rotherham added.

“If you know you’re going to teach in one place for 30 years, the pension plan works for you, and you should do that. The problem is that people decide they don’t like teaching. They get sick, they have to move, they fall in love with someone whose job requires relocation, they need to be a caregiver. Life happens, people make plans that don’t work out, so these structures have to have some flexibility.”

Disclosure: Andrew Rotherham is co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners and serves on the board of directors of ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ.

States have until Monday to distribute $81 billion in federal relief funds to districts — two-thirds of the total for K-12 schools in the American Rescue Plan. And while the law requires districts to put aside 20 percent of their funding to address learning loss, an early review of spending plans shows most aren’t adding tutoring programs, extending the school year or adopting other programs expected to help students catch up.

Instead, they are largely using the money to fill budget gaps, hire staff and issue “thank you” bonuses to teachers, Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, said during a Tuesday webinar. Her team has consulted with district finance officials and reviewed school board documents and media reports.

“That surprised us because tutoring is sort of the darling … for how to spend federal funds,” Roza said Tuesday, referring to multiple studies in recent months about the effectiveness of “high-dosage” tutoring programs.

Chad Aldeman, policy director at Edunomics Lab, added there’s little evidence so far of efforts to focus on the needs of the most vulnerable students. “The pandemic has affected different students differently, and we’re seeing a lot of one-size-fits-all,” he said. Facility improvements, he added, might be a smart use of one-time funds, but they don’t really help students most impacted by the pandemic.

The relief bill, passed in March, represents the largest-ever, one-time influx of federal funds for K-12, setting up a “fast and furious” planning process for districts over the next few months, Roza said. According to the law, districts have to submit spending plans to their states in August and provide updates or revisions every six months. They have until the end of September 2023 to spend the money. Meanwhile, leaders are facing heightened scrutiny from parents and advocacy groups looking to hold leaders accountable for helping students recover from months of remote learning. District spending plans must demonstrate that officials made extensive efforts to involve parents, educators and students.

“That means districts can’t go into a dark, smoke-filled room and make a plan,” she said, urging officials to be more transparent than usual about hiring staff, launching new programs and issuing contracts for services. Some superintendents, she said, are still operating under emergency powers, allowing them to sign off on expenditures without school board approval.

‘They can do better’

The National Center for Youth Law, a nonprofit law firm based in Oakland, California, is among those closely tracking whether districts are spending the funds on students with the greatest need. On Tuesday, the organization joined with three other California groups to release of how 48 districts in the state planned to use relief funds from last year.

While there were some bright spots, the analysis showed plans often lacked detail, especially on how schools intended to respond to students with limited internet access, seek parent and community input, and target support to English learners, students in foster care and others likely to face the most earning disruption.

Vague descriptions of goals make it “hard for folks to follow up, so at the end of the school year, they can ask, ‘How did it go?’” said Atasi Uppal, an attorney focusing on juvenile justice and education at the firm. “We want to give some grace to districts that were planning last September, but we also just think they can do better.”

As districts in the state begin to develop plans for a combined $55 billion in state and one-time federal funds, the groups are calling for greater input from the public and offer a list of questions parents and others can use to seek details on programs and expenditures.

Roza and other school finance experts warn districts against using time-limited funds on raises, new staff and other recurring costs. But Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, one of the other California groups, added that schools in the state already have such large shortages of school counselors and nurses that it might be wise to increase staff. “There is a need for a lot of extra support now,” he said.

However, districts planning to hire may struggle to find enough qualified applicants, Aldeman said, based on labor market data showing districts have more job openings than they’re able to fill.

In Colorado, the Denver Public Schools tried to get a jump on the planning process by meeting with a budget advisory committee in December, even before the Biden administration took office and the relief bill passed. Those meetings — involving students, parents and union representatives — inspired a new $3 million to provide on-site mental health professionals at schools.

Chuck Carpenter, the district’s chief financial officer, said schools want to have “the most welcoming and ready environments” when students return in the fall. But the challenge is to avoid committing to new programs they won’t be able to sustain financially in the future. “It’s a grant and you have to treat it like that,” he said. “There will be a time when it’s not there.”

Meanwhile, not all states will meet the deadline to allocate funds to the local level. One possible complication is that they are holding onto the money at the state level as part of their annual budget process. And in some states, the legislature doesn’t approve the budget until the end of June. “If that’s the case, then generally those funds can’t leave the state treasury to be liquidated … until the state’s budget has been enacted,” explained Austin Reid, education committee director at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, some states have alerted the department that they will miss Monday’s deadline as well as the June 7 deadline to submit a state plan for using relief funds. A department spokesperson did not offer specifics, but said, “states are providing updates on a regular basis.”