Schools received billions in stimulus funds. It may not do enough.

As the pandemic closed schools across the country, the federal government responded with billions of dollars to help districts support distance learning, serve free meals to students and reopen schools safely.

In 2021, the Biden administration gave the districts an additional $122 billion through its $1.9 trillion stimulus package, an amount that far exceeded previous rounds. neighborhoods were required to spend at least 20 percent of that money to help students recover academically, while the remainder can be used for general efforts to respond to the pandemic.

But while most schools have since deployed various forms of intervention, and some have spent more on academic recovery than others, there are plenty of signs that the money has not been spent in a way that has substantially helped all of the country’s underprivileged students.

Recent test scores underline the dizzying effect of the pandemic, which has pushed many of the country’s students into remote learning for extended periods of time. Students in most states and in nearly all demographics experienced major setbacks in math and reading after many schools closed. In 2022, math scores underwent the largest declines ever recorded on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tests a broad sample of fourth- and eighth-graders dating back to the early 1990s.

Education researchers and advocates say restoring the effects of distance learning should be a top priority, but it’s unclear how much of the funding is helping students across the country fully catch up.

Plans for the relief funds varied across the country. Some districts have invested more extending the learning time or offering intensive tutoring in small groups focused on math or English, whatever research has shown are among the most powerful interventions. Others have spent much of their money on facility upgrades, online tutoring services, general bonuses for employees and other measures that education experts say are less effective in helping students catch up.

National data on how money is spent is scarce. That is what the federal government does limited to follow of the relief funds, which were sent directly to the states. Many states, which distribute the money to districts, do not provide detailed breakdowns of expenditure.

Some education experts who have been closely monitoring aid money said federal guidelines should have focused more on addressing learning loss, and were skeptical that many districts’ recovery plans were robust enough. Although schools were initially slow to spend the moneythey are now on track to exhaust funding by the September 2024 deadline for budgeting the money.

Robin Lake, the director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, said the impact of the funding was a “bit of a black box” and she expected different recovery rates across the districts. Ms. Lake said giving general bonuses, completing maintenance projects and plug holes in the budget were less effective interventions.

“I think in some counties we’ll see the money well spent,” Ms. Lake said. “And in many — perhaps most — it won’t be as well spent as it should have been, in terms of addressing the pressing need right in front of us.”

She pointed to data showing that many students still don’t have access to the kinds of intensive tutoring programs that have proven effective showed major positive effects about math and reading performance.

a federal investigation A survey conducted in December found that most public schools offered some form of tutoring, but only 37 percent of students provided more intensive “high-dose” tutoring, which is usually done in smaller groups, lasting at least 30 minutes, and at least three sessions per week. Of all public schools, only 10 percent of students participated in that type of tutoring.

Initial reports indicate that schools have had difficulty establishing academic recovery programs. A recent article by Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research shows that schools struggled last year to implement recovery programs on the intended scale due to staff shortages and lower student involvement. The researchers, who sampled 12 districts, found that some of the estimated effects were positive, but even if the programs were fully established, they still wouldn’t be enough to help all students catch up by 2024.

Thomas Kane, the center’s faculty director and co-author of the papers, said implementation has improved since then, but remains well below necessary levels. He expected some gains this year, but said a “significant gap” will remain as not enough schools extended the academic year or placed most students in summer school.

“Each district can describe how they spend the money,” Mr. Kane said. “Few, if any, districts have a recovery plan specifically tailored to their students’ losses.”

Education Department officials said they were confident that much of the stimulus money was being spent on academic recovery.

“The department’s ongoing technical assistance and communications with states indicate that investments in academic recovery, staffing and student mental health make up the bulk of local spending,” Adam Schott, a deputy assistant secretary, said in a statement. .

Sasha Pudelski, a director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, said districts prioritized additional learning time. According to data from July of AASA68 percent of districts spent some money on expanded summer education, 42 percent added apprenticeship by offsetting staff, and 39 percent provided intensive tutoring.

In Tennessee, 87 counties participate a programme which, using federal dollars, provides matching scholarships to districts that provide small group tutoring in reading or math.

One of the participating districts, Elizabethton City Schools, hired 14 full-time employees this year to tutor 404 elementary and middle school students in English. The students attended sessions of 45 minutes each twice a week during the school day.

Myra Newman, the deputy director of schools for academics, said the district spent 56 percent of the $5.6 million in relief funds on academic recovery. The district has already made significant progress: In 2022, 45.6 percent of third- to eighth-graders were proficient in English, compared to 33.9 percent in 2021 and 43 percent in 2019.

“Most of our money went to students and closing the gap in learning loss,” Ms. Newman said.

Other districts have spent more relief funds on facility upgrades. Researchers at Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab estimated that a quarter of the latest round of relief funds would be spent on amenities.

The Klamath County school district in Oregon plans to use about 30 percent of its $16.1 million federal share for academic recovery programs and 70 percent for facility projects. Those include buying new turf, replacing HVAC systems, upgrading flooring, renovating bleachers in baseball fields, building a gym, and building a parking lot for an elementary school.

Glen Szymoniak, the district superintendent, said the projects would help improve student safety and well-being. Some bleachers had “nails coming up” and planks that creaked. Without a new artificial pitch, some students would have no place to play during recess and one of the football teams would have to travel half an hour to practice. Officials chose not to spend the money on hiring staff because the money would eventually run out.

“We should fire them in three or four years,” said Mr. Szymoniak. “It’s not a way to treat people.”

Officials instead attracted millions in annual state funding to hire reading specialists, add counselors and expand small-group instruction and projects, which Mr. according to early reviews. Last year, 36 percent of third graders met state-level expectations for English, up from 42 percent in 2019.

The Cudahy School District in Wisconsin spends about 80 percent of its $4.7 million in relief funds on facility upgrades and 20 percent on academic rehabilitation, including professional development for staff members and the hiring of literacy specialists. Among the district’s third graders, 29.8 percent were proficient in reading in 2022, up from 23.6 percent in 2021 and up from 35.9 percent in 2019.

Tina Owen-Moore, the district superintendent, said officials were concerned about maintaining salaries, so they spent more on upgrading HVAC systems and remodeling classrooms to accommodate social distancing.

“If we just gave high doses while we had those funds there, and once those funds go away, we wouldn’t be able to continue supporting students,” Ms Owen-Moore said.

Marguerite Roza, the director of the Edunomics Lab, said some facility projects, such as new HVAC systems, were reasonable, but others, such as parking lot renovations, wouldn’t do much to help students catch up.

While she said she wanted to see improved academic recovery efforts, she didn’t expect many districts to review their plans. With the funding deadline looming and the steep drop in enrollment expected to hurt some districts’ budgets, she said officials were more focused on preventing school closures and large-scale layoffs.

“Pretty soon they start to panic,” Mrs. Roza said. “There’s less and less energy to leverage these limited dollars.”