Reports about schools squandering their $190 billion in federal pandemic recovery money have been troubling.  Many districts spent that money on things that had nothing to do with academics, particularly building renovations. Less common, but more eye-popping were stories about new football fields, swimming pool passes, hotel rooms at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and even the purchase of an ice cream truck. 

So I was surprised that two independent academic analyses released in June 2024 found that some of the money actually trickled down to students and helped them catch up academically.  Though the two studies used different methods, they arrived at strikingly similar numbers for the average growth in math and reading scores during the 2022-23 school year that could be attributed to each dollar of federal aid. 

One of the research teams, which includes Harvard University economist Tom Kane and Stanford University sociologist Sean Reardon, likened the gains to six days of learning in math and three days of learning in reading for every $1,000 in federal pandemic aid per student. Though that gain might seem small, high-poverty districts received an average of $7,700 per student, and those extra “days” of learning for low-income students added up. Still, these neediest children were projected to be one third of a grade level behind low-income students in 2019, before the pandemic disrupted education.

“Federal funding helped and it helped kids most in need,” wrote Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, on X in response to the two studies. Lake was not involved in either report, but has been closely tracking pandemic recovery. “And the spending was worth the gains,” Lake added. “But it will not be enough to do all that is needed.” 

The academic gains per aid dollar were close to what previous researchers had found for increases in school spending. In other words, federal pandemic aid for schools has been just as effective (or ineffective) as other infusions of money for schools. The Harvard-Stanford analysis calculated that the seemingly small academic gains per $1,000 could boost a student’s lifetime earnings by $1,238 – not a dramatic payoff, but not a public policy bust either. And that payoff doesn’t include other societal benefits from higher academic achievement, such as lower rates of arrests and teen motherhood. 

The most interesting nuggets from the two reports, however, were how the academic gains varied wildly across the nation. That’s not only because some schools used the money more effectively than others but also because some schools got much more aid per student.

The poorest districts in the nation, where 80 percent or more of the students live in families whose income is low enough to qualify for the federally funded school lunch program, demonstrated meaningful recovery because they received the most aid. About 6 percent of the 26 million public schoolchildren that the researchers studied are educated in districts this poor. These children had recovered almost half of their pandemic learning losses by the spring of 2023. The very poorest districts, representing 1 percent of the children, were potentially on track for an almost complete recovery in 2024 because they tended to receive the most aid per student. However, these students were far below grade level before the pandemic, so their recovery brings them back to a very low rung.

Some high-poverty school districts received much more aid per student than others. At the top end of the range, students in Detroit received about $26,000 each – $1.3 billion spread among fewer than 49,000 students. One in 10 high-poverty districts received more than $10,700 for each student. An equal number of high-poverty districts received less than $3,700 per student. These surprising differences for places with similar poverty levels occurred because pandemic aid was allocated according to the same byzantine rules that govern federal Title I funding to low-income schools. Those formulas give large minimum grants to small states, and more money to states that spend more per student. 

On the other end of the income spectrum are wealthier districts, where 30 percent or fewer students qualify for the lunch program, representing about a quarter of U.S. children. The Harvard-Stanford researchers expect these students to make an almost complete recovery. That’s not because of federal recovery funds; these districts received less than $1,000 per student, on average. Researchers explained that these students are on track to approach 2019 achievement levels because they didn’t suffer as much learning loss.  Wealthier families also had the means to hire tutors or time to help their children at home.

Middle-income districts, where between 30 percent and 80 percent of students are eligible for the lunch program, were caught in between. Roughly seven out of 10 children in this study fall into this category. Their learning losses were sometimes large, but their pandemic aid wasn’t. They tended to receive between $1,000 and $5,000 per student. Many of these students are still struggling to catch up.

In the second study, researchers Dan Goldhaber of the American Institutes for Research and Grace Falken of the University of Washington estimated that schools around the country, on average, would need an additional $13,000 per student for full recovery in reading and math.  That’s more than Congress appropriated.

There were signs that schools targeted interventions to their neediest students. In school districts that separately reported performance for low-income students, these students tended to post greater recovery per dollar of aid than wealthier students, the Goldhaber-Falken analysis shows.

Impact differed more by race, location and school spending. Districts with larger shares of white students tended to make greater achievement gains per dollar of federal aid than districts with larger shares of Black or Hispanic students. Small towns tended to produce more academic gains per dollar of aid than large cities. And school districts that spend less on education per pupil tended to see more academic gains per dollar of aid than high spenders. The latter makes sense: an extra dollar to a small budget makes a bigger difference than an extra dollar to a large budget. 

The most frustrating part of both reports is that we have no idea what schools did to help students catch up. Researchers weren’t able to connect the academic gains to tutoring, summer school or any of the other interventions that schools have been trying. Schools still have until September to decide how to spend their remaining pandemic recovery funds, and, unfortunately, these analyses provide zero guidance.

And maybe some of the non-academic things that schools spent money on weren’t so frivolous after all. A draft paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research in January 2024 calculated that school spending on basic infrastructure, such as air conditioning and heating systems, raised test scores. Spending on athletic facilities did not. 

Meanwhile, the final score on pandemic recovery for students is still to come. I’ll be looking out for it.

This story about federal funding for education was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

The post PROOF POINTS: Some of the $190 billion in pandemic money for schools actually paid off appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In his 2013 book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” French economist Thomas Pikkety made a provocative argument about rising income inequality and the growing importance of disparities in wealth. He suggested that the world was returning to a sort of 19th century dynastic capitalism where the rich, with their inherited wealth, and the poor masses were growing ever farther apart. Pikkety’s follow-up book, “Capital and Ideology,” published in English in March 2020, argued that inequality trends are turbocharged in our current period of “hypercapitalism.” 

There are consequences for education, too. A new analysis of school funding by a Pennsylvania State University researcher finds that the highest spending school districts are investing even more in their public schools, from kindergarten through high school. The school funding gap between a top 1 percent district and an average-spending school district at the 50th percentile widened by 32 percent between 2000 and 2015, the study calculated. These top 1 percent districts were already funding their schools at much higher levels in 2000 but then increased annual school funding at a faster rate than everyone else. 

“The people who can and wish to spend more are running away with it,” said Bruce Baker, a school finance expert at Rutgers Graduate School of Education. “This is what educated people with fewer fiscal constraints want for their own children. Those communities clearly set a higher bar and increase that bar at a faster rate over time.”

The May 2020 study didn’t identify the roughly 1,300 districts at the top, which educate fewer than 500,000 of the nation’s children, but characterized them as mostly wealthy, white suburbs. They are not necessarily the wealthiest zip codes in the United States or where the wealthiest Americans live but they are the highest spending school districts. The table accompanying this story shows how three wealthy suburban school districts, which are certainly among the top 1 percent, increased their funding relative to their nearby cities. The Lower Merion district located in the suburban Philadelphia Main Line boosted its education funding 87 percent between 2000 and 2015 to more than $23,000 per student. That’s more than double the amount that Philadelphia, one of the poorest cities in America, spent on its students. 

Why we should care about high levels of education spending among the rich is a matter of debate. Baker argues that their choices affect the rest of us. That’s because education investments by the rich can potentially boost their children’s achievement levels and give them an advantage in college applications. As these well-educated children move from well-funded schools to elite universities, their advantages continue as they apply to graduate schools and seek the most coveted jobs. Those at the bottom as well as those in the middle can struggle to compete against this kind of educational privilege. 

“It’s kind of like baseball,” Baker said. “When the Yankees spend more, it makes it harder for everyone else to compete.” 

Baker was not involved in the Penn State study, which was conducted by Matthew Gardner Kelly, an assistant professor of education. Kelly points out in his article, published in the peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher, that researchers often exclude the highest spending districts because they’re such outliers and have a tendency to push up national averages. The top 1 percent districts across the nation funded their schools by an average $21,000 per student in 2015. That’s almost three times the level of the bottom 1 percent of school districts where funding levels were $7,500 per student. 

Related: Data show segregation by income (not race) is what’s getting worse in schools

New York State has the highest concentration of students who attend schools in the best-funded districts, Kelly calculated. That’s because the state has many narrowly drawn, tiny school districts where most of the residents are wealthy and districts rely on local taxation to generate revenue. Often local governments don’t have to actively raise taxes but they passively collect more taxes as property values rise. Nassau County, just outside New York City on Long Island, has the highest concentration of students who attend the best funded public schools among all counties in the country. Almost 17 percent of all the top 1 percent students in the nation live in this one county. 

California, by contrast, has the greatest concentration of under-funded students in the bottom 1 percent. Among counties nationwide, Los Angeles County has the greatest concentration of students who are funded at the bottom 1 percent level, Kelly calculated. California was also one of 13 states that bucked the national trend, where gaps did not grow between the top 1 percent and the average district between 2000 and 2015. State law has made it difficult for even wealthy communities to raise taxes since the 1978 passage of California’s Proposition 13.

Kelly’s calculations excluded federal funds, which allocate extra money to high poverty districts but constitute only 8 percent of overall education funding. Only local and state funds were analyzed.

The demographics of these top 1 percent of districts are striking. The communities are 72 percent white, 12 percent Latino and 5 percent black. By contrast, the bottom 1 percent of districts, as measured by school funding, are 51 percent white, 25 percent Latino and 15 percent black. 

The school funding debate shifted in the 1980s, away from trying to equalize funding among all schoolchildren to making sure that every child gets enough funding for an adequate education. But many scholars and policy experts are now questioning whether aiming for a reasonable minimum bar is enough anymore. 

Zahava Stadler, director of policy at EdBuild, a nonprofit organization that advocates for more equitable education funding, said in an interview that current school funding policies reinforce residential segregation by income. “It’s a vicious cycle,” said Stadler. “Families with means want to move to school districts that spend more on education and the price of homes go up. As home values rise, that district is able to collect more property tax and finance schools at a higher level. The best financed school districts become islands of affluent families, where no one else can afford to buy into the community. You wind up with school districts with wealthy kids and the poor kids on the other side.”

“This promotes and entrenches a segregation that’s bad for kids,” she added.

Related: Inside the Reardon-Hanushek clash over 50 years of achievement gaps

Stadler isn’t optimistic that school funding policies will change. “The communities that are able to finance their schools more have the loudest voices in the statehouse,” she said. “Concentration of wealth also means concentration of political power in a few school districts.”

The current coronavirus recession is likely to make things worse.  Sales and income taxes that states collect are plummeting and states are expected to cut their contributions to schools. Low-income schools are especially reliant on these state funds. Meanwhile, residential property taxes in the suburbs are more stable and likely to weather a recessionary period with less damage. The poor will suffer yet another assault while funding gaps widen further.

This story about rich schools was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Rich schools get richer appeared first on The Hechinger Report.