Last month wrapped the $190 billion federal investment from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER. Just recently, two different research groups found that the money has produced some math and reading gains, but not nearly enough to address pandemic-era learning gaps. The researchers suggested that, at the current rate of return, 5–10 times the dollars or more were needed.
Truth be told, another massive financial windfall isn’t in the cards. So, what happens now? Does the end of ESSER mean test scores stay stuck at 2024 levels? Or is it possible to get better outcomes for the dollar so that learning recovery can continue when ESSER is gone? Notably, both of the recent ESSER studies posited that the ESSER money could have mattered more than it did.
We’ve been studying this massive ESSER experiment for clues about how school spending could deliver more for students, in part because the relationship between spending and outcomes has been—how to put this—frustratingly uneven. Many districts did indeed produce impressive recovery. But in others, the results have been the opposite, with test scores continuing to fall even as large sums flowed.
One thing is clear: there are no silver school-spending bullets. ESSER funds came in the form of a blank check. Where we have data, we find that how a district spent its funds doesn’t explain differences in test score gains. For instance, California data indicates that districts that spent more on tutoring didn’t see greater improvement than peers that didn’t deliver any tutoring. In Illinois, investing more in staffing didn’t guarantee improved outcomes, especially for its highest-poverty students.
Lawmakers looking for a high-leverage investment might be tempted to prescribe how districts spend their funds. But two otherwise similar districts can spend money on the same inputs and get wildly different results. The ESSER experiment reconfirms the notion that converting dollars to outcomes is so much messier than following a simple spending recipe.
So how can school systems continue to drive learning gains as ESSER ends? We’ve been analyzing the data and engaging with leaders to understand how systems might get more return on the dollars they have. Our findings point to five lessons on making money matter more in schools:
