New Research Finds Federal Pandemic Relief Aided Academic Recovery During the 2022-23 School Year, Especially Among Low-Income Districts
The Education Recovery Scorecard provides the first opportunity to compare learning loss and ensuing recovery at the district level across the country, providing opportunities to further understand how time remote, federal dollars expenditure, and other factors impacted students during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how some districts have made substantial progress toward academic recovery.
A collaboration of:
Project Leaders
“We should thank teachers and principals and superintendents for what they’ve done for American schoolchildren in the last year; their efforts have led to strikingly large improvements in children’s learning. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the recovery has been uneven and we have a long way to go. Academic performance remains lower and more unequal than in 2019 in all but the wealthiest communities in America,” said Sean Reardon, Professor of Poverty and Inequality, Stanford Graduate School of Education, and one of the study’s co-authors.
Sean Reardon
Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education“No one wants poor children to foot the bill for the pandemic, but that is the path that most states are on,” said Dr. Thomas Kane, Faculty Director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and one of the study’s co-authors. "States need to take leadership and ensure that every last dollar of the remaining federal relief is spent on academic recovery efforts, like summer school, high-quality tutoring, and after-school instruction next year.”
Thomas Kane
Walter H. Gale Professor of Education and EconomicsMedia Resources
Change In Average Math Scores
Change In Average Reading Scores
Data Provided by:
Districts Making Progress
In the News
When Congress sent tens of billions of dollars to schools — an unprecedented sum — to battle the coronavirus pandemic, it seemed like reopening campuses was going to be the toughest thing.
The federal government sent nearly $200 billion to U.S. schools in the past few years to help address Covid-era learning challenges. Now the first studies are out showing what the money accomplished—and hinting at what could happen when it goes away this fall.
The federal government invested $190 billion in pandemic aid for schools; the largest chunk, $122 billion, came in 2021 to help students recover. Altogether, it was the largest one-time federal investment in American education, but it came with a major question: Would it work?
America’s schools received an unprecedented $190 billion in federal emergency funding during the pandemic. Since then, one big question has loomed over them: Did that historic infusion of federal relief help students make up for the learning they missed?
Pandemic school closures upended U.S. education. Many students lost significant ground, and the federal government invested billions to help them recover.
Overall, average test scores improved for both poor and nonpoor students in the 15 states for which researchers had economic data. But the improvements were larger for students who were not from poor families. As a result, the gap in achievement based on income grew.
Contact Us
For more information or an answer to a specific question regarding the data, please submit your questions through the form to Rachel Tropp at the Center for Education Policy Research.
Partners
