Lessons Learned from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009)
Preface and Context
The U.S. Congress has passed three stimulus bills that provided nearly $190.5 billion to the Elementary and Secondary Emergency Education Relief (ESSER) Fund administered by the U.S. Department of Education (USDoE). Each states’ funding is based on the same proportion share that they receive under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Title-I, Part A.
The three stimulus bills are:
- The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER I) Fund under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed in March 2020.
- The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER II) Fund, passed in December 2020, the under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act.
- The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER III) Fund was passed in March 2021, under the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021.
The primary focus of ESSER I was to prevent, prepare for, and respond to COVID-19.
ESSER II and ESSER III funds will predominantly help school districts to reopen and operate safely, and to address the impact of the Pandemic on students. ESSER I funds are available for obligation through September 30, 2021. ESSER II funds are available through September 30, 2022. And, ESSER III funds are available through September 30, 2023.
While ESSER I and II funds relate to activities that address learning loss, at least 20% of a district’s ESSER III must address learning loss through the implementation of evidence-based interventions. Districts must ensure that the interventions respond to the students’ academic and social, emotional, and behavioral needs. In addition, the interventions must address the impact of COVID-19 on under-represented student subgroups such as, students of color, from low-income families, with disabilities, and who are English second-language learners, from migrant families, homeless, or in foster care.
This Blog focuses on ESSER III and ESSER II funding.
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Introduction: American Rescue Plan Money is Coming!
On May 11, 2021, the U.S. Department of Education (USDoE) announced that more than $36 billion in grants under the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act were awarded to over 5,000 institutions of higher education across our nation.
For (pre-)K to 12 districts and other Local Education Agencies (LEAs), this means that ARP funds will also soon be available for you. Indeed, most state departments of education have already applied for these funds and, once approved, it is expected that individual LEAs will need to apply in turn to receive their funds.
More specifically, the ARP is making approximately $129 billion in federal funds available for K-12 education through its Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund. While most of this money will go to (pre-)K to 12 districts and LEAs, the states must use a portion of these funds to address the recovery and other service delivery needs of homeless students.
As passed by Congress, ARP funds have been allocated as follows:
Source: Education Week and the Learning Policy Institute
With the end of the school year coming soon, and little time between now and the beginning of the new school year, districts will have precious little opportunity to strategically plan for and develop sound proposals for these ARP funds.
This is similar to the Spring of 2009, when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provided billions to districts across the country in response to the Great Recession and the earlier melt-down of a number of key financial institutions.
Given the anticipated time crunch, and the ultimate educational goal of facilitating the sustained academic and social, emotional, and behavioral progress of all students, it is important to re-visit how districts used their ARRA funds, and how their investments directly impacted student outcomes. Using these “lessons learned,” districts can hopefully increase the return-on-investment relative to their incoming ARP funds.
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Lessons Learned from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA; 2009) initially provided approximately $93.5 billion to (pre-)K to 12 education. The largest funding areas were:
- $53.6 billion for school districts and states to pay for teacher salaries and educational programs
- $21 billion for school facility modernization and construction
- $5 billion for Head Start
- $12 billion for special education programs, including job training for those with disabilities
An April 16, 2015 Report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that most of the ARRA funds distributed to districts were spent on “capital outlays, such as construction, land purchases and equipment acquisition.”
Even when districts used the funds to hire personnel, the Report noted that this came largely in the form of non-teaching staff. The stated reason for this was that districts “may have been less willing to hire new staff for risk that, once the short-lived grants were spent, the new staff would need to be let go.”
In the end, a January 5, 2012 Congressional Budget Office analysis reported that, of the estimated $93.5 billion in ARRA funds available to the USDoE for distribution, fully $6.3 billion was not spent. This was the second largest amount of unspent ARRA funds among the sixteen-plus federal agencies tracked.
Even in the face of these unspent ARRA funds, a significant amount of money was used in ways that had no direct effect on students.
At the extreme level, the Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute reported (February 24, 2010) that the New Holstein School District legally paid $416,219 in ARRA funds to their health insurance trust and an additional $237,862 to its utility companies.
The Institute explained these expenditures by citing the mixed messages coming from the U.S. Department of Education.
On one hand, the USDoE published a general guidance reminding districts that ARRA money should “supplement, not supplant” funding for educational expenses. On the other hand, the USDoE told ARRA awardees that, “The ARRA is expected to be a one-time infusion of substantial new resources. These funds should be invested in ways that do not result in unsustainable continuing commitments after the funding expires. . . Invest the one-time ARRA funds thoughtfully to minimize a ‘funding cliff.’”
On the whole, the ARRA expenditures and experiences detailed above suggest that ARRA funds were largely spent on things that had only indirect effects on students’ academic and social, emotional, and behavioral instruction, progress, and outcomes. This is consistent with my experiences during ARRA as I worked as a Federal Grant Director at the Arkansas Department of Education and across the country as a consultant.
Specifically, I saw well over a thousand school districts spend their ARRA funds on equipment (e.g., buses and whiteboards), quickly outdated computers and software, off-the-shelf supplemental curricula, and other disposable materials. Moreover, I witnessed numerous indiscriminate “shop ‘til you drop” spending sprees where districts bought unvetted “stuff,” because their “use it or lose it” ARRA funds were about to be recalled.
And so, in the context of the forthcoming ARP funds, the critical question is:
Did sustained outcomes, relative to students’ academic and social, emotional, and behavioral progress, result from the ARRA money distributed to districts across the country?
Upon reviewing the annual Elementary and Secondary Education Act and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act outcomes reported to the USDoE during and immediately after the ARRA funding, the clear answer to this question is, “No.”
So, based on the funding lessons learned from ARRA, how can districts target their ARP funds more judiciously toward the strategic needs of their students, and toward meaningful and sustained academic and social, emotional, and behavioral student outcomes?
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What Practices Should Districts Target with their ARP Dollars?
Given the ARRA discussion above, it would be much easier to talk about what districts should not target in the ARP proposals that they submit to their respective state departments of education. But I am going to largely avoid that trap.
Indeed, for those who regularly read my Blog articles, you know that I am going to emphasize the importance of strategically targeting research-based practices, rather than embracing generic frameworks, programs, and computer-based instructional or intervention software systems that do not involve direct teacher or related service staff support.
But in emphasizing research-based practices, I do not recommend using a top-down approach that involves, for example, consulting the most-recent Hattie list of the strategies that correlate most strongly with student achievement.
CLICK HERE for the April 13, 2019 Blog Article:
“How Hattie’s Research Helps (and Doesn’t’ Help) Improve Student Achievement. Hattie Discusses What to Consider, Not How to Implement It (More Criticisms, Critiques, and Contexts)”
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Instead, I strongly advocate for a bottom-up approach where districts and schools analyze the current academic and social, emotional, and behavioral status, progress, strengths, and needs of their own students, and then strategically determine (a) what differentiated instruction and student grouping approaches will maximize learning; and (b) what additional multi-tiered services, supports, and interventions will most impact students who are academically struggling and/or exhibiting social, emotional, or behavioral challenges.
CLICK HERE for the March 6, 2021 Blog Article:
“A Pandemic Playbook to Organize Your School’s Academic and Social-Emotional Strategies Now and for the 2020-2021 School Year: Where We’ve Been and What You Should Do”
In this context, students who are at-risk, underachieving, unmotivated, unresponsive, and unsuccessful should be particularly supported. And this should especially include students from poverty, with disabilities, who do not have English as their primary language. . . and students of color who have experienced implicit and explicit bias, school finance gaps, and institutional inequities for many past generations.
Once this bottom-up strategic planning is complete, the ten practice and support areas below are recommended to produce meaningful and sustained (i.e., beyond ARP) academic and social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes for the students especially identified above.
Note that some of these ideas require coordination and collaboration with other partners. In addition, a few of the ideas may need approvals from your respective departments of education (or beyond).
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Ten Recommended Practice and Support Areas for your ARP Funds
[CLICK HERE for a Comprehensive Discussion with “Next Step” Details for each of these Recommendations]
Based on the 2009 ARRA “lessons learned” and the discussion above, the Ten Investment Recommendations are:
- Recommendation 1: Grow Your Own Specialists—For Existing Staff.
- Recommendation 2: Grow Your Own Teachers and Specialists—For High School Graduates and Community Applicants.
- Recommendation 3: Grow Your Own Coaches and Intervention Specialists.
- Recommendation 4: Full-Service School Programming and/or Staffing.
- Recommendation 5: Academic Tutors and Credit Recovery Instructors.
- Recommendation 6: Social-Emotional Support Mentors or Case Managers.
- Recommendation 7: Data-, Tech-, or Case-Managers.
- Recommendation 8: Establish a Career and Technical Education Center, Internship, or “5th Year” Apprenticeship Program.
- Recommendation 9: Parent Liaisons and Parent Educators
- Recommendation 10: College Entrance and Dual-Enrollment Support Mentors
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Summary
The focus of today’s Blog has been on how to apply for and invest your short-term American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds in ten key effective practice growth areas so that your district or school (a) can address specific students’ current academic and social, emotional, and behavioral needs, while (b) compounding the results of those investments into long-term, sustained outcomes in these same areas for all students.
We addressed the importance of immediately addressing the needs of students who are at-risk, underachieving, unmotivated, unresponsive, and unsuccessful. And we included in this group students from poverty, with disabilities, who do not have English as their primary language. . . and students of color who have experienced implicit and explicit bias, school finance gaps, and institutional inequities for many past generations.
In the first part of this Blog, we identified the financial “pots” that are available for (pre)K to 12 districts or LEAs according to the ARP legislation.
We then provided an historical contrast with the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), providing documentation the billions of ARRA dollars awarded to districts across the country were invested in (a) capital outlays, such as construction, land purchases and equipment acquisition; (b) non-teaching (rather than instructional) staff; and (c) other materials and resources that were not vetted (because districts were spending the money before losing it at the end of the award period), and that did not have direct impact on student outcomes.
We also documented how many U.S. Department of Education ARRA dollars were “left on the table,” and how districts were given precious little time to strategically plan for and allocate their money.
With these ARRA “lessons learned” in-hand, we recommend ten growth areas for districts to consider with their ARP money. If all of the financial metaphors are hitting home, then you are fully understanding these recommendations.
Once again, the focus here is on addressing short-term needs while building a long-term infrastructure (using some of the money as a “start-up”) to directly address students’ academic and social, emotional, and behavioral needs.
The additional focus is on well-researched and proven practices, and not global frameworks, untested programs, and off-the-shelf curricula or computer-based interventions.
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As a bonus, we also want to call your attention to a recently published resource (May, 2021) focusing on teacher recruitment and retention, targeting the diversification of the workforce, and emphasizing the positive impacts on students.
The resource, Teaching Profession Playbook, was developed by 26 organizations including the Council of Chief State School Officers, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Parent Teacher Association. It describes important strategies and provides examples for attracting and supporting a wide range of different teachers and other educators.
[CLICK HERE for this Resource]
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I hope that the ARP and ARRA documents, and the funding recommendations above are useful to you and your staff. We have a critical opportunity, with funding, to address a number of the academic and social-emotional effects of the Pandemic. And we want to maximize this opportunity with investments that have immediate and long-term benefits.
If there is anything that I can do to add value to the discussion above in your setting, please feel free to contact me with your questions.
As always, I am happy to provide a free, one-hour consultation or “chat session” on how to apply these (and other) ideas to best meet the needs of your students, staff, schools, and system.
Best,
Howie
