Financial Decisionmaking

There is a lot of interest in tracking Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund spending. Importantly, the information that State Education Agencies (SEAs) and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) collect about spending will ultimately shape how the data can be used. During this webinar, National Comprehensive Center partner, Edunomics, shared what they are learning about how states are collecting American Rescue Plan (ARP) spending data, what can be learned from the data, and provide recommendations to improve SEA and LEA data collection efforts.

The U.S. Department of Education and its technical assistance partner the National Comprehensive Center released a new resource to help states share their progress deploying the $122 billion American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) funds to support safe in-person instruction, address the effects of lost instructional time due to COVID-19, and meet the social, emotional, mental health, and academic needs of their students. 

The Reimagining Education: Strategies for Innovative Systems Change paper series spotlights three innovative, evidence-based educational strategies that hold the potential to transform student experiences, leading to additional choices, deeper engagement, and increased preparation for students’ postsecondary opportunities.

Most school districts and charter schools are receiving significant, one-time revenues through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER III) grant program. The ESSER III Investment Decision Guide and its companion User and Resource Companion document are designed to guide decision makers through a strategic decision-making process to both effectively use these funds to address the purposes outlined in the ARP legislation and to leverage them in support of related district and school improvement efforts.

The 2020–21 Illinois Student Advisory Council spent months researching how to use the current influx of COVID-19 education funding to make the biggest impact for students. This recorded webinar, hosted by the Region 9 Comprehensive Center, features their instrumental recommendations to help all students achieve educational success and incorporate student voices in decision-making. 

This guide highlights eight steps of the scenario planning process which educators can use as they plan for future educational needs within constraints or disruptions, such as the pandemic. It includes a template that educators can use to complete their own scenario planning.
 

Suggested Citation:

Layland, A. & Corbett, J. (2021). Scenario Planning for Learning Recovery. Rockville, MD: National Comprehensive Center at Westat.
 

There is a lot of interest in tracking Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund spending. Importantly, the information that State Education Agencies (SEAs) and Local Education Agencies (LEAs) collect about spending will ultimately shape how the data can be used. During this webinar, National Comprehensive Center partner, Edunomics, shared what they are learning about how states are collecting American Rescue Plan (ARP) spending data, what can be learned from the data, and provide recommendations to improve SEA and LEA data collection efforts.

It's been a year since Congress approved the largest-ever one-time investment in public education: ESSER III. And spending has been slow. Now's a good time for SEAs and LEAs to assess current investments and finalize spending plans to do the most for students. During this webinar, National Comprehensive Center partner, Edunomics Lab shared an “investment tool” to help leaders do just that.

These questions kicked off a webinar hosted by the National Comprehensive Center and presented by Marguerite Roza, Director of Edunomics Lab and David Deschryver, Senior Vice President of Whiteboard Advisors. 

While states are not required to track and report how their ESSER funds are spent publicly, Roza described a number of reasons to do so, including:        

This resource guides leaders in using data visualizations to foster thoughtful conversations with different stakeholder groups about financial strategy and management, equity and using dollars to do the most for students.

Our nation spends approximately $650 billion per year on our K–12 education system. To understand how those dollars impact students, we need to examine spending where it reaches them: at the school level. The document describes a national data archive that uses all elements of Interstate Financial Reporting (IFR) system, developed by the Edunomics Lab, to present the school-by-school expenditure data required by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The School Spending Data Archive further controls for methodological differences between states by adjusting school-by-school per-pupil figures to reflect a set of standardized expenditures.

The National Comprehensive Center has published a new resource announcing the development of a School Spending Data Archive. The archive will capture school-by-school spending figures reported by each state (as required by ESSA). The data are being aggregated, normed, and made comparable, publicly accessible, and aligned with other national-scale data sets, including those with student demographics and outcomes.

Now that most states have released their ESSA-required school-level spending data, State Education Agencies (SEAs) and districts (and policymakers and advocates) want to know how to use these data to make sure our dollars are doing the most for students.

June 30th was the federal deadline for states to report school-by-school spending data under ESSA’s financial transparency requirement. To date, 44 states and D.C. have released spending data, with the remainder preparing to publish by fall. 

By Marguerite Roza and Hannah Jarmolowski