Purpose: What Was the Money For?

The bottom-line purpose of ESSER funding was, of course, emergency relief. The swiftness of the federal response reflected this urgency. Tracy O’Connell Novick, a school board member of Worcester Public Schools in Massachusetts, noted how unusual this was: “The uniformity, everybody deciding together that this was important enough, that they needed to do it and do it fast, was kind of a novelty, at least in my experience in observing the federal government.” Still, that uniformity soon gave way to a more complex reality. The emergency was fast-moving, and the measures needed to address it changed over time. Additionally, districts were expected to achieve a broad range of objectives with the funding, and at times, they found these to be in conflict.

Jeni Corn serves as the Director of Research and Evaluation for the new, ESSER-funded Office of Learning Recovery and Acceleration at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Speaking about the evolving nature of the crisis, she referenced the words of former West Virginia Governor Bob Wise,¹ saying, “ESSER I was really triage, and then ESSER II was about transition, and then ESSER III was around transformation.” She explained that ESSER I was largely devoted to safety and health measures, and ESSER II was about the return to in-person learning ESSER. III brought a pivot to thinking about research-backed, innovative ways to advance student learning and well-being.

As the early days of the pandemic recede in the public mind, it’s important not to discount both the necessity and the difficulty of the initial triage phase. Amanda Brownson, associate executive director of Policy & Research for the Texas Association of School Business Officials, remembered “what districts were up against…trying to get kids to log in [for remote learning]. And then, after we were done logging in, to come to school when their parents were still, in many communities, afraid of letting them out of the house. And then, trying to get staff into buildings.” She said, “it's very hard to tell people, ‘Lock down. Don't get within six feet of anybody else, even if you're outside,’ [and then] to pretty quickly [transition to saying], ‘No, it's fine. You can be in a classroom full of 20 people, no worries.’” She concluded, “Don't discount how hard it was just to keep the doors open and the buildings open and the trains on the tracks.”

Later that first year, though, it became clear that schools and districts would need to address the pandemic’s broader impacts on students. Multiple interviewees recalled that their earliest expenditures were on establishing safe learning environments (including by shifting to remote learning; investing in masks, sanitizing, and COVID testing; creating classrooms in expanded areas or outdoors to facilitate social distancing; and seeking to clean indoor air). Their later efforts, though, focused more on learning acceleration—especially through tutoring, summer learning, and curriculum changes—and on addressing the mental and behavioral health impacts on students of social isolation and grief. Federal rules reflected these shifting priorities. It was only with ESSER III, signed into law in March 2021, that Congress introduced a requirement for a large portion of the money (20 percent of that tranche) to be spent on “addressing learning loss” rather than just dealing with the immediate practicalities of the pandemic.²

The relief dollars were also intended to support multiple goals, some of which may have been in conflict with each other. While ESSER funding was narrowly meant to help manage the effects of the pandemic on schools, it was also provided through legislation intended to simulate the economy. This second goal was widely understood to be part of the purpose of the ESSER money. For instance, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National League of Cities, and several state departments of education have referred to ESSER funds or their authorizing legislation as “stimulus.”³ Brownson said that purpose loomed large for districts, and added, “I think there were real and legitimate concerns that we were about to head into a very serious recession,” and “the need to get those dollars out into the economy quickly is one that you can't totally disregard as you think about what pressures districts were under to spend.” That imperative, though, cut against the need to deploy these resources thoughtfully and effectively.

To better understand this conflict, it’s instructive to compare ESSER with two other one-time federal education funding allocations that were referenced often by interviewees: the general education stabilization funds provided as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) during the Great Recession in 2009, and Race to the Top (RTTT) funding, a competitive grant program during the Obama administration meant to incentivize states and ultimately districts to enact transformational changes to improve academic outcomes.⁴

When the Center for Education Policy looked back on ARRA’s education stabilization investment, it described the fund’s goal as “to restore the total level of public education funding” to what it was before state and district revenues were hit by the recession, with the chief aim of “saving or creating K–12 teaching jobs and other education-related jobs,” though districts were secondarily encouraged to pursue academic improvement.⁵ Initially, many expected ESSER funds (especially the earlier tranches of ESSER funds) to serve this purpose, and it was a core argument for increased federal support. In April 2020, after the passage of the first ESSER allocation, education finance expert Mike Griffith warned in a blog post for the Learning Policy Institute that since “the International Monetary Fund has predicted that this will be the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” COVID “will impact state tax revenue and thus result in reduced state P–12 education spending.” He added, “While the additional federal funding is helpful, it is not nearly sufficient to make up for potential state budget cuts.”⁶ Other commentators had similar worries.⁷

Ultimately, though, state budgets didn’t take nearly the predicted hit.⁸ The economics of the pandemic weren’t as expected, and much of the anticipated revenue loss was mitigated by other elements of the relief packages, like direct aid to taxpaying individuals and businesses. As a result, attention shifted—as did expectations for districts’ use of ESSER funds. After ARRA, the White House celebrated that “the rapid distribution of [State Fiscal Stabilization] funding helped fill the gaps and avert layoffs of essential personnel in school districts and universities across the nation.”⁹ Many school districts also used ESSER dollars to keep teachers on staff, but that isn’t often cited as a success of the funding.

This may be an instance in which hindsight is unkind to districts’ rational, in-the-moment decision-making. COVID brought a sudden shock to districts’ enrollment and attendance rates, negatively impacting district budgets in many places because state aid amounts are largely calculated based on student counts.¹⁰ This also affected individual schools’ budgets in districts with a similar funding approach. For example, Boston Public Schools determines its allocations to schools mostly based on enrollment, adjusted to account for differences in student characteristics. Miriam Rubin, former budget director of the district, said,

We knew that schools and students were experiencing a lot of uncertainty, so we made a decision early on to do as much as we could to reduce the impact of enrollment declines on school budgets. We provided money to hold schools harmless for the declines and avoided making large cuts. But it was tricky, because the conversation with schools was like, “Wait, you're going to fill in a million-dollar budget gap for me for how long?” And we were like, “I don't know.” So people were worried about that. But the fact that we didn't have to create more instability in those years was huge.

It was hoped, and expected, that student numbers would bounce back as the pandemic abated, but it was not to be.¹¹ The most recently available federal data indicates that public K–12 enrollment declined by about 1.2 million students from 2019 to 2021, or about 2.4 percent—an immense percentage drop, one not seen the Second World War.¹² While actual enrollment data for subsequent years are not available as of this writing, it is clear that the federal government has lowered its expectations. In the year before the pandemic, the National Center for Education Statistics predicted that public K–12 enrollment would be 49.2 million students in 2024 and would hold steady for the following five years.¹³ By 2023, that projection for 2024 had been cut to 47.4 million, with an expected loss of 1.7 million more students five years later.¹⁴

If enrollment had actually rebounded as expected, using ESSER dollars to maintain budgets and staffing levels would likely have been seen as a prudent, short-term stabilization choice. John Carlson, chief administrative officer of Rochester Public School in Minnesota, said, “Like most districts in America, we were not planning to be a smaller school district in the fall of 2020 than we were in the spring of 2020… I’ve worked here 12 years, and every year we’ve counted on another hundred kids, another hundred kids. It kept growing naturally, organically, over time. So yes, we should have cut some at the end of 2020, but we had no data to tell us that we were going to drop 660 students, so therefore we should also reduce some of our staff.” Now that enrollments haven’t rebounded, however, this approach is being reevaluated in some corners as irresponsible can-kicking or a failure to adjust to new trends.

Instead of judging budget stabilization as a successful use of federal funding in the mold of ARRA, ESSER is now being evaluated more in the vein of Race to the Top. Much as that grant program tried to foster school transformation, people want to know what this funding is going to do to reinvent the school experience.¹⁵ In part, this is driven by the fact that the ESSER III allocation, the largest tranche, came at a slightly better economic moment and included a specific focus on addressing the academic effects of interrupted learning. And with such a huge disruption to the normal business of schooling, it’s reasonable to wonder not just how we will come back from this pandemic, but what will be different, and better, when that process is complete. Many districts, in fact, did use ESSER funding to support experimentation and innovation, as discussed below. Still, it is important to be clear about the purposes of the funding. ARRA was meant for economic stimulus and fiscal stability. RTTT was intended to spur transformation and academic improvement. ESSER was expected to do both. We should recall both purposes when evaluating the investment’s returns.