How well that’s going is “decidedly mixed,” according to a new by the group , which is part of a coalition of organizations advocating for the money to be spent on effective strategies to help the most disadvantaged kids. The group has created a dashboard rating states’ plans for spending their Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief — known as ESSER III funds, since it is the third round of federal COVID-19 relief money.

State education agencies receive only a sliver of the recovery funds but bear responsibility for making sure schools and districts make good use of the money. Yet Education Reform Now’s report details concerns that states are “essentially abdicating their role in ensuring equity and evidence-driven effectiveness in the learning recovery process,” noting that few have said how they will track implementation.Ěý

The will be the topic of a to be held online Wednesday, Jan. 26, at 2 p.m. Eastern Time. Education Reform Now’s Nicholas Munyan-Penney, who has closely tracked the spending plans, will be joined by New Jersey state Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz, the Education Trust’s Terra Wallin, Education Reform Now’s Washington state Director Shirline Wilson and Christine Pitts, resident policy fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. is open now.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Education Department gave final approval to all 50 state ESSER III plans, as well as Washington, D.C.’s. But since districts have through 2024 to use the funds, there is time for states to take additional steps to ensure resources are being directed to the students and schools most in need and being spent on strategies backed by research, the new report explains.Ěý

A nonpartisan think tank affiliated with Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform Now (ERN) was among nine advocacy organizations that in May for how states could fulfill their obligations, as districts began creating the local plans that education departments were responsible for reviewing.

Seven states — Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Utah — earned ERN’s top “green” rating. According to the organization’s review, most states have failed to make sure funds are targeted to high-needs schools. Only half of state plans reflect “robust” efforts to solicit required input from community groups. And just six describe how officials will determine whether interventions paid for with recovery dollars are backed by evidence of effectiveness.Ěý

The third and largest relief fund approved by Congress since the start of the pandemic, the American Recovery Plan Act directs states to send 90 percent of their respective share of the money directly to school districts and public charter schools, which must spend at least 20 percent to address student learning losses and unmet social-emotional needs.Ěý

States are responsible for distributing the funds to schools and students most in need and to make sure schools use them for effective interventions. At least 5 percent of each state’s share of the money must also be used to address learning losses. According to ERN, 12 states are simply passing most or all of their share of the funds on to districts.

When Congress approved the first two rounds of COVID relief funding for K-12 education, school finance experts cautioned that districts would be tempted to spend the money on staving off layoffs in what was then presumed would be a devastating recession, plugging pre-existing budget deficits, giving staff raises and other things that would prove unsustainable once the money ran out.

As the pandemic stretched into a second academic year, it became clear that up to 3 million students were no longer attending public schools, which translated to a decline in state tuition dollars. States, the finance experts again warned, should be mindful of spending the infusion of federal cash in ways that create so-called fiscal cliffs — situations in which pushing a funding shortfall out into future years would worsen it.Ěý

At the same time, as researchers analyzed data on students’ flagging academic performance, a number of organizations made recommendations about interventions that would help students make up for lost learning quickly. Because the most profound gaps disproportionately affected historically disadvantaged children, the organizations — including the National Urban League, The Education Trust and the National Center for Learning Disabilities — said educators should take pains to see that to support those hardest hit.

In ERN’s survey, only five states — Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi and Missouri — said in their plans that districts would be required to specify how they would allocate funds to their neediest schools. Because of this, education agencies will have a hard time holding districts accountable for prioritizing resources for low-income students, children of color, English learners and students with disabilities, the report notes.

Ten states will use a portion of the 10 percent of funds not going directly to districts to boost funding for school systems that do not enroll enough disadvantaged children to qualify for the main pot of ESSER III dollars.Ěý

There are bright spots, say ERN analysts. Nebraska and West Virginia have provided districts with roadmaps for the equitable distribution of funds, including using data on academic performance among different demographic groups to make sure they have identified the biggest needs.

And at least 20 states plan to invest in a kind of tutoring program that research has shown to be one of the most effective ways to boost student achievement. Arkansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C., have approved or are creating statewide tutoring programs.Ěý

As evidence that the plans can be used to pressure school systems to rethink local plans, the ERN report notes that many states revised their descriptions how they have engaged their communities as a result of the U.S. Education Department approval process. While nearly all states ultimately said they complied with the requirement that they consult with an array of organizations representing families and other populations rarely consulted during budgeting, it’s unclear how meaningful this engagement was.

On the positive end of the spectrum, the report singles out Colorado for hiring a consultant to host focus groups and survey community members. By contrast, Illinois insisted the consultation of stakeholders during the 2019 creation of a strategic plan counted, while Kansas pointed to early-pandemic task forces on distance learning and school reopening.

Enter American Rescue Plan’s Elementary & Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, about $200 billion with $22 billion dedicated specifically to address learning loss using “evidence-based interventions” focused on the “.”

This historically large investment provides an unprecedented opportunity to learn what kinds of interventions work well for America’s students — but we will squander this opportunity if state officials don’t create the right infrastructure to make sense of what is taking place.

The U.S. has nearly 14,000 school districts making choices around COVID recovery. Districts are likely to try different recovery strategies, but we won’t be able to learn about these approaches without officials collecting the right information, including which students are getting them.Ěý

This requires a degree of collective action currently lacking among states. The window of opportunity is short to get this right. With loose federal requirements, states and districts need to assume the lead role in ensuring ESSER funds change the trajectory of students’ lives.Ěý

Our team recently analyzed state ESSER plans to better understand the level of guidance provided around recovery initiatives (described in more detail in a recent CALDER ). Most state plans call for programs that specifically target students who have been hit hardest by the pandemic. However, they’re often hazy on the specifics of how such targeting will take place.

 The plans tend to include little information on how students will be identified for interventions or how interventions will be matched to specific student learning goals. They are even more vague on data collection, with general language indicating they will collect data required for the ESSER reporting, but only about half the plans explicitly described concrete steps for how they will collect data on the impact of ARP ESSER funded programs.

How can states increase the likelihood that ESSER spending leads to collective learning? At a minimum, states should mandate reporting around three specific questions:

• What recovery interventions are districts using and what are their key features?
• Which students are targeted for recovery efforts?
• Which students are actually participating in and regularly attending recovery initiatives?

More broadly, states hold powerful levers they can use to increase the likelihood that districts will be equipped to support and learn from individualized intervention programs. These include, but are not limited to: 

• Building Capacity for Local Data Use: Local data is more timely and detailed than state data, yet, many districts struggle with the capacity to analyze and use data resources effectively to target individual students’ needs. States can use their funds to increase districts’ capacity to identify and address students’ individual needs by, for example, creating opportunities for enhancing local data systems, for professional development, or for regional data supports.Ěý
• Contributing to a Culture of Learning and Continuous Improvement: Ultimately, states and districts have an incredible responsibility to help students recover from the pandemic and achieve their full potential, and should be held accountable for this responsibility. At the same time, it is likely some interventions and other ESSER-funded activities along the way will not work. States can create opportunities that focus on the importance of continuous improvement, while equipping districts to engage in that work too.Ěý
• Encouraging Student, Family, and Community Engagement: Fundamental to the idea of offering individualized support is student and family engagement, without which districts will have an incomplete picture of the interventions that are needed and will work. At the same time that states encourage evidence-based academic interventions and supports, they should help equip districts to foster authentic engagement opportunities that can help shape the use of ESSER funds.Ěý
• Peer to Peer Networking and professional development: Because states have cross-district data, they often have greater insight into which districts are struggling with similar challenges. States can use their data to connect similar districts who face similar challenges, creating opportunities for those districts to share knowledge, experiences, and resources.
• Using Cross-Sector State Level Data: States generally have extensive data resources that they can use to help districts understand where individual students are in their learning and identify students at-risk. States can enhance their reporting tools so that districts have access to actionable information about their students (e.g., Early Warning Systems, individual-level assessment reports tied to state curriculum standards).
• Grant Opportunities Requiring Individualized Supports: States may use state activity funds to create grant programs that target a high-need area (e.g., chronic absenteeism, math) and require districts to implement and collect data on targeted interventions as part of the grant program.Ěý

That this is an unprecedented amount of federal funding to be spent over just four years cannot be overstated. To consider both the urgent needs of today with what we will need to know in the next three to five years is a balancing act. If we focus only on the immediate needs of the moment, we will miss the opportunity to answer the key questions that could shape the next several decades of education policy. We urge state and district leaders to keep broader learning goals top of mind as they design, implement, and adjust learning acceleration efforts.Ěý

Heather Boughton, Ph.D., is director of research, evaluation & advanced analytics at the Ohio Department of Education. Jessica de Barros is director of policy, practice & outreach for the CALDER Policymakers Council at American Institutes for Research. Dan Goldhaber is vice president and director of research for CALDER for the American Institutes for Research. Sydney Payne is a research assistant for CALDER at the American Institutes for Research. Nate Schwartz is a professor of practice at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform.