President Biden's signature education initiative turned out to be a costly failure for students. And now the administration is asking for even more money to make up for its failures.
The Biden administration's fiscal year 2025 K-12 federal budget proposal calls for an $8 billion grant program to further support public schools' COVID-19 recovery efforts. Temporary Academic Acceleration and Achievement Grants are intended to increase student attendance, expand tutoring, and add study time in public schools.
While there is nothing wrong with these goals, the proposal comes as it becomes clear that federal relief funds for schools are not being used effectively to serve America's 50 million students. It is something that
Congress provided $190 billion to states for K-12 education during the pandemic, $122 billion of which was part of Biden's American Rescue Plan (ARP) in March 2021. For context, this is more than three times the total federal funding for K-12 education. For the 2020 school year, there will be more than $3,800 in additional funding per student.
Those federal funds are set to expire in September, and school districts will have to spend or oblige most of the relief supplies. But nearly three years after Biden signed the ARP, students are still not catching up, despite the federal windfall.
During the pandemic, most public schools were slow to reopen, leaving many students behind.Researchers at Harvard University and Stanford University Education Recovery Scorecard During the pandemic, students in grades 3 through 8 lost an average of half a year in math and a third of a year in reading, according to the joint study.
Most recently, researchers reported that there were signs of progress in addressing some of these learning losses starting in the 2022-2023 school year, but found that “in most states, there is a “Inequalities are even wider now than they were before the pandemic.”
Overall, students recovered only about one-third of their learning loss in math and one-quarter of their learning loss in reading. This is not at all surprising since academic recovery is not a priority for many public schools across the country. For proof, just look at how much federal taxpayer pandemic funding school districts have spent.
Aside from blatant examples of wasted pandemic funds (renovating soccer stadiums, electrifying bus fleets, hiring more central office staff, to name a few), available data shows that much of the federal funding goes to students. This suggests that it was used for something that had little to do with learning. Researchers at Georgetown University's Institute for Educationnomics found that 20% of ARP K-12 dollars are spent on facilities (such as HVAC upgrades and building repairs), and many school districts also spend less on services that benefit education. They estimate that the money is being used for teacher bonuses and budget backfilling, rather than investments. Address learning loss.
If school districts had prioritized academic recovery, the massive pandemic funding would have been better spent on the things Biden is currently seeking funding for. For example, the federal School Pulse Panel, which collects information from public schools about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, found that public schools that used relief funds for high-dose tutoring, an intervention funded by Schools estimate that only 37%. President's proposal).
However, public schools should not bear all the responsibility. By the time the ARP was passed, schools had received $67.5 billion under former President Donald Trump. According to the study, that amount was already more than enough to cover the costs of reopening. Schools fell behind in disbursing the first two rounds of federal relief funds. The third round was simply too much.
Not only that, but Congress required only 20 percent of ARP dollars to be spent on learning loss, which should have been a top priority for public schools at the time. In the end, federal policymakers from both major political parties provided large sums of slush money to public schools with no consistent purpose. Dollars were spent accordingly.
Biden's latest grant proposal is an admission of failure. Reasonable people may disagree on whether public schools need his additional $122 billion in ARP, but this historic investment is important in the area where it matters most: inside the nation's classrooms. It is clear that the profits were poor.
The K-12 funding in the latest budget proposal has a clearer purpose and is much less than the K-12 ARP funding, but it represents an opportunity to prioritize learning loss at a time when fiscal coffers were awash. It highlights the fact that it has been lost. The current situation is that students are still not catching up. Policymakers should be skeptical that another round of COVID-19 relief funding will work.
Aaron Garth Smith is Director of Educational Reform and Christian Bernard is Assistant Director of Educational Reform at the Reason Foundation.
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