The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a substantial federal investment in K–12 education known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER), aimed at supporting student learning during the pandemic and recovering from the loss of learning time in the wake of schooling disruptions. This report is the first assessment of how school-level spending changed in the two years after the start of the pandemic.

Why This Matters

Empirical evidence shows that levels of school funding matter for student outcomes. Within the context of pandemic-era spending, researchers have demonstrated a relationship between expanded ESSER funding at the district level and student academic experiences and outcomes. ESSER funding has been linked to reduced time in virtual instruction, small increases in math and reading test scores, and a reduction in state absences. This study provides descriptive evidence on how district-level revenues during the pandemic translated into school-level expenditures for low-income students across the United States.

Key Takeaways

• Overall, typical school-level expenditures rose by about $1,000 per student nationwide from the 2018–19 school year to 2021–22.
• Using the Urban Institute’s Model Estimates of Poverty in Schools (MEPS), we find that the typical allocation of school-level spending became modestly more progressive for students from low-income families. The average school-level spending allocated to students from low-income households, relative to those from higher-income households, increased by about 2.5 percentage points from 2018–19 to 2021–22 (around $350 per student).
• The use of the MEPS measure allows us to generate consistent state-level estimates of changes in school-level spending over time. We show that some states shifted toward more progressive school-level spending in the wake of the pandemic than other states.

How We Did It

This analysis uses school-level data on spending (NERD$ data), teacher staffing, and enrollment to calculate progressivity of school resources before the start of the pandemic (2018–19) and after (2020–21 and 2022–23). We use the MEPS data to estimate the share of students from households below the federal poverty level at each school. Because of the substantial changes in K–12 education that occurred at the start of the pandemic (e.g., unplanned remote education, the expansion of universal school meals, and a necessary ramp-up to distributing and spending ESSER I funding), we do not analyze data from 2019–20.