Research on Education Strategies to
Advance Recovery and Turnaround

Planning & Finance
The First Year of Pandemic Recovery: A District-Level Analysis
This report provides the results from analyzing test score results from roughly 8,000 school districts in 30 states to measure the extent to which test scores changed from Spring 2019 to Spring 2022 and from Spring 2022 to Spring 2023.
Educational Plan and Fiscal Plan: Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER)
This report provides the strategies and use of federal relief funds under ESSER used by the Hawai'i State Department of Education.
Strategies to Guide the Equitable Allocation of COVID-19 Relief Funding for Early Care and Education
This brief highlights some of the strategies states are pursuing to address equity in allocating their ARPA child care funds.
Educator Attrition in North Carolina Public Schools: Updates through September 2023
This brief analyzes the current state - as of September 2023 - of teacher and principal attrition in North Carolina public schools.
Reflecting Back and Looking Forward: Educational Equity in the Era of COVID-19
This report demonstrate how districts in California approached a range of educational challenges in ways that recognized and explicitly addressed disparities in opportunities and outcomes, even in the midst of a debilitating pandemic.
How Six School Systems Are Responding to Disrupted Schooling: Will It Be Enough?
This report provides results of in-depth interviews of leaders on the ground during the early pandemic years in six school systems.
The K–12 Pandemic Budget and Staffing Crises Have Not Panned Out—Yet
This report presents school district leaders' views about staff turnover, hiring, and districts' financial outlooks at the end of the 2020–2021 school year.
Uneven Recovery Between Urban and Rural Districts

National test scores show the deleterious effects of the pandemic on student learning. In this blog, we explore the urban-rural divide in learning loss and recovery. Urban districts lost more ground in math, while rural districts lost more in reading. As districts recover, Latino students and economically disadvantaged students in rural areas are further left behind.

ESSER Funding Cliff Toolkit: Data-Driven Financial Decision Making for Post-ESSER Spending
This toolkit provides school leaders with relevant information and data around ESSER expenditures and student outcomes.
Beyond Graphs and Numbers: Education Policy Impact in Atlanta

Superintendents and school leaders navigated hundreds of impossible decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic. They needed quick, accurate, and trusted information about their students’ academic well-being, but districts weren’t positioned to start new partnerships or data sharing agreements during these tumultuous months. Their research staff were frequently managing public health logistics and staffing data, too.