Schools Received Billions in Stimulus Funds. It May Not Be Doing Enough. [nytimes.com]

^{Elizabethton City Schools in Tennessee provided English tutoring this year for 404 elementary and middle school students with the increased funding.Credit...Travis Dove for The New York Times}

By Madeleine Ngo, The New York Times, June 5, 2023

When the pandemic shut down schools across the country, the federal government responded with billions of dollars to help districts support remote learning, serve free meals to students and safely reopen schools.

In 2021, the Biden administration gave districts another $122 billion through its $1.9 trillion stimulus package, an amount that far surpassed previous rounds. Districts were required to spend at least 20 percent of those funds on helping students recover academically, while the rest could be used on general efforts to respond to the pandemic.

Yet, while most schools have since deployed various forms of interventions and some have spent more on academic recovery than others, there are ample signs that the money has not been spent in a way that has substantially helped all of the nation’s students lagging behind.

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