The subtitle of In Covid’s Wake, a new book by Princeton University’s Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee that evaluates America’s response to the pandemic five years ago, leaves little room for doubt about the authors’ conclusion: “How Our Politics Failed Us.” Macedo and Lee offer a compelling and damning critique of the ways institutions and experts let politics rather than evidence inform decision-making like prolonged school closures that we now know was misguided.
While the pandemic-era failures are well documented, they are not universal. One policy initiative in particular had bipartisan support and can claim a record of modest successes in the education sector. Under both the Trump and Biden administrations, Congress enacted and allocated a substantial investment to the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund.
Critics have argued that ESSER funding was misused, wasted, or ultimately ineffective—but those claims overlook the complexity of student achievement. While it is true that achievement still lags behind pre-pandemic levels on numerous indicators across the country, ESSER funding played a critical role in preventing an even steeper academic decline. There is ample evidence that some school districts used the federal aid to expand tutoring, hire staff, extend learning time, and address mental health needs—efforts that contributed to measurable academic gains, with some districts even surpassing their 2019 standardized test scores.
The $190 billion ESSER investment was designed to minimize disruptions and provide resources for schools and students struggling in the wake of pandemic-induced school closures. While early funding priorities focused on safely reopening schools, subsequent efforts shifted toward academic recovery, with 20 percent of funds being mandated to address learning loss. Yet, despite the stated intentions behind this historic federal investment, many students continue to struggle. Recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that, compared to 2019, 4th grade students performed three points lower in math and five points lower in reading, while 8th grade scores were down eight points in math and five points in reading. These disappointing national outcomes have fueled skepticism about ESSER’s effectiveness.
Certainly, there are examples of questionable spending of ESSER funds. An Iowa school district upgraded their weight room. One Kentucky school built a new football field. But leveling criticism only at non-recovery spending distorts the broader reality: ESSER provided a crucial lifeline that kept many students from falling farther behind academically. Without it, the learning loss caused by Covid-19 school closures would likely have been far worse, leaving even fewer resources available to the students who needed them most.
Early research on the impact of ESSER funds shows that federal relief played a statistically significant role in helping students regain lost academic ground. The Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) at Harvard found that for every additional $1,000 in ESSER funding per student, math achievement increased by 0.03 grade equivalents—roughly six days of learning—while reading scores rose by 0.018 grade equivalents—about three days of learning. These findings underscore the direct relationship between relief spending and student progress.
A subsequent report also concluded that federal dollars not only contributed to academic recovery but also helped narrow the widening achievement gaps that emerged during the pandemic. In an interview with the Harvard Gazette, Professor Tom Kane, one of the study’s authors, observed, “Among districts with similar poverty rates and other characteristics, those receiving more federal funding caught up faster.”
But Kane concedes that student recovery has been uneven. At an event last February at the Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School, he cited the broad discretion given to districts in spending ESSER funds as a reason some have seen more gains than others. He pointed to Alabama as a statewide success story, where the latest NAEP data show that student scores now exceed pre-pandemic levels from 2019.
Kane’s findings have been corroborated by other studies. The CALDER Center similarly found that for every additional $1,000 in ESSER funding per student, district math scores rose by 0.008 standard deviations, with a similar but statistically insignificant increase in reading scores. While the precise impact varies across studies, the broader conclusion remains clear: ESSER funding not only prevented students from falling farther behind but also accelerated recovery beyond what would have been possible in its absence.
While research highlights the positive impact of ESSER funding on student achievement nationally, there are also notable successes at the district level worthy of researchers’ attention.
