Two new studies offer a first look at how much more students learned thanks to federal pandemic aid money.
Improvements in reading scores were smaller: roughly three school days of progress per $1,000 in federal relief spending per student. “These and other factors likely caused greater learning loss during the pandemic and dampened academic recovery,” Goldhaber writes in Study #2, pointing out that, “the Detroit, MI public school district received about $25,800 per pupil across all waves of ESSER… Grosse Pointe, MI only received about $860 per pupil.”
Instead, the researchers say, the money’s effectiveness should be judged by a more realistic standard, based on what previous research has shown money can and cannot buy.
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