What the data tells us about how ESSER spending did and did not help schools recover

Internal competition

The analysis also found that ESSER spending led to staffing problems in school districts: In some cases, emergency funds were spent at higher rates in wealthier schools in the district, despite similar needs in higher-poverty schools for additional staffing.

Roza says district leaders interviewed by researchers about the problem reported that staff vacancies were typically filled first in schools with lower poverty rates, and sometimes by district employees willing to transfer from schools with higher poverty rates.

This exacerbated staffing problems in higher-poverty schools, which then scrambled to fill newly created ESSER-funded positions and replace employees moving throughout the district.

“Let’s say San Diego said, ‘I’m going to put a reading coach, a nurse, or a parent coordinator in every school,’” Roza says. “Immediately, these positions were filled first at their wealthiest schools. We see this every time teachers migrate to less poor schools, so you may have just created another opening in your high-poverty school.”

Without looking back

When it comes to contracts for services such as tutoring and education funded by ESSER, Roza says she and other researchers found that school districts often renewed these contracts the following year without ever checking whether they were worth the money spent.

The analysis shows that this was one of many examples of ineffective operation of contracted services.

“Let’s say you have a restaurant or something like that. If they’re going to spend money on a supplier’s product, they’re going to make sure they get value from it,” Roza says, “or they’re going to lower that amount because it matters to their bottom line. In the public education space, the market doesn’t function as well.”

Roza says there’s no single person to blame in the system. An example of how money can be wasted as a result of a contract would be when the math coordinator asks teachers for a program they don’t use much of. However, then the coordinator leaves his position in exchange for a promotion or work outside the circuit, and his successor resumes the unused program without examining whether this is needed — it was simply part of the budget they inherited.

“(Districts) got all this new money, and some of them actually spent more money on vendors that offer overall good products,” Roza says. “But they don’t necessarily buy the best products, get what they need, get the most out of what they bought, or see if it even worked. We even hear this from suppliers who are frustrated about it.”

Reading results

Analysis by Edunomics Lab found that when it came to improving reading scores, identifying more students with reading difficulties did not always lead to improvements in their reading skills.

Where did investing in reading catch on? Roza argues that districts were most successful when they first improved reading instruction for general education students – namely through instruction based on learning to read. By the time a student receiving this type of reading instruction is identified as needing special education services, Roza explains, they will already have a solid foundation on which to build.

“Fewer of them will even be placed in special education for reading difficulties,” Roza says, “because having that kind of good basic education from the beginning has really helped them.”

Broken budget process

Similar to the wage labor issues, the analysis found that school districts tended to continue to spend ESSER funds on programs for many years without reviewing their performance.

Part of the problem is that districts’ budget cycles require them to finalize budgets for the coming year before the previous year’s standardized test scores are available, which leaves little or no room to adjust spending based on student performance.

In one case, Roza says, a district leader moved to finalize the budget for the entire year ahead, limiting it to expenses that may or may not meet student needs.

“During the first full year of pandemic relief funds available under the American Rescue Plan, districts spent only 14 percent of the grant funds, largely because the funds were held back in district budget cycles, leaving no room for a more agile and urgent response, the analysis shows.

Ultimately, Roza argues that while averages in the data help researchers describe the relationship between ESSER spending and student outcomes, that doesn’t mean the average reflects reality in every school district. He says there are big differences between neighborhoods, and some of them buck trends.

“People keep wanting to say ‘average district,’ and the average includes districts that performed great and those that didn’t,” warns Roza, “so it’s not a good idea to apply our average scores to every single district.”