This brief from the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at AIR discusses the impact of state, local, and teacher layoffs on students.

The COVID-19 pandemic raised concerns about the possibility of increased staff attrition from the public school sector, as it did for other occupations during the Great Resignation that followed the pandemic’s onset. Recruiting and retaining education staff were pressing challenges even before the pandemic began.

In order to understand state and local policymakers’ strategies for bolstering teaching resources in the wake of the pandemic, FutureEd analyzed the Covid-relief spending plans of 5,000 school districts and charter organizations representing 74 percent of the nation’s public-school students.