Study of District and School Uses of Federal Education Funds
Contract Information
Current Status:
Underway
Duration:
September 2019 – May 2025
Cost:
$2,926,715
Contract Number:
ED-PEP-16-A-0005/91990019F0407
Contractor(s):
SRI International
Augenblick, Palaich & Associates
Contact:
Federal funds account for less than 10 percent of K–12 education spending nationally but can play an important role, particularly in communities that are lower-income or have lower-performing schools. Although each federal education program has unique goals and provisions, they often allow funds to be used for similar purposes and services or overlapping populations. Congress provided state and local education agencies greater flexibility in their use of federal funds through the 2015 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). As the COVID-19 pandemic began to disrupt schools in 2020, Congress also created new programs to provide funding and flexibilities for states and districts to respond to the emergency. Because policymakers remain interested in how federal dollars are spent, this study will examine the distribution and use of pandemic relief funds and explore the possibility of examining those issues for five "core" federal education programs that represent the vast share of the Department's K–12 grant making: Part A of Titles I, II, III, and IV of ESEA, and Title I, Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
- How much did pandemic recovery funding contribute to K–12 education and did it reach local districts with the greatest need?
- Can information from district fiscal systems be used to reliably examine whether core federal programs pay for similar functions or support local education staffing?
This descriptive study collected data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia as well as a nationally representative sample of 400 school districts. States provided information on suballocations of federal education funds to school districts and school districts' total operational revenues. Sampled school districts provided detailed fiscal data describing revenues, expenditures, and payroll, as well as human resources data describing personnel, for two school years, 2018–19 and 2019–20. In addition, the study collected fiscal data from state education agencies and governor's offices in all states describing three federal COVID relief fund programs implemented in 2020 and 2021: the Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief (ESSER) program, the Governor's Emergency Education Relief (GEER) program, and the Coronavirus Relief Fund (CRF) program. The study is also using fiscal data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to validate and complement the study's primary data collection.
A report is expected in 2025 and will be announced on https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/.
A restricted-use dataset comprised of sampled districts' revenue, expenditure, and personnel (FTE positions by job type, salary and benefits associated with a position, and funds to pay for those positions) information will be available in 2024 for secondary analyses and to inform future collections of school finance data.
Key findings will be available after the report is published.