What did redistributed federal taxpayer Covid funds accomplish?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government shelled out $189.5 billion to school districts across the country via Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding. Wisconsin was no exception. Across three rounds of ESSER funding, the state and school districts received more than $2.4 billion dollars. Despite federal requirements that ESSER money be used to supplement rather than replace existing spending, many school districts are clamoring to keep programs in place that were largely funded with ESSER money. Indeed, DPI has said that they will “be advocating to increase funding for schools to make up for the loss in ESSER funds.” The end of ESSER funds is also being blamed for a record number of school districts going to referendum this Fall.
But a critical question remains: Is there evidence that ESSER funding achieved its intended goal of addressing learning loss? With the deadline for spending ESSER dollars approaching at the end of September, now is an opportune time to assess whether the funding effectively mitigated and reversed the educational setbacks caused by the pandemic. Combining data from the state report card with data on district funding allocations from the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, we find that only one area of spending bears a strong relationship to learning loss improvement.
