Category: Federal Government Actions

GAO Report Looked at Effectiveness of ESSER (October 28, 2024)

According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released October, 23, 2024, school districts prioritized spending of COVID-19 emergency (ESSER) funds based on community input, financial need, state policies and other influences. It also found that the effectiveness of the ESSER money for COVID-19 recovery efforts is difficult to determine because school districts were involved in many activities during the pandemic. Additionally, long-term improvements are unknown because not enough time has passed since initial positive effects were noted.

Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee had asked GAO to examine school district ESSER spending. Some conservative lawmakers at the federal level have questioned the proper use of the money. A statement posted on the Senate HELP Committee GOP page on X said that the report “found it difficult to determine what uses were effective. More research is needed from the field.”

In addition, AASA, The School Superintendents Association released a September report on spending practices from ESSER’s allocations from the American Rescue Plan and found most districts directed money toward expanded learning time, including summer programming and after-school activities. But because districts had various fiscal priorities and approaches for investing the money in different phases, it was difficult to generalize the best practice approaches for the emergency funds.

GAO’s report said education officials from varying states sometimes differed on what they considered was an allowable expense for district-level use of federal COVID-19 emergency funds for schools. Directives from state legislatures also influenced spending practices. Pennsylvania officials told GAO researchers that proposals to renovate or upgrade athletic fields, stadiums or tracks were denied because school districts could not justify that those improvements were necessary to respond to the pandemic.

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USDE Releases AI toolkit for K-12 Schools (October 28, 2024)

On October 24, 2024, prompted by a Biden administration October 2023 executive order and as a result of U.S. Department of Education (USDE) public listening sessions held with 90 educators as well as 12 roundtable discussions with education leaders between December 2023 and March 2024, USDE’s Office of Educational Technology released a highly anticipated guidance to help K-12 leaders integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their school districts. The 74-page toolkit includes strategies for mitigating risks and developing AI use policies and comes as more K-12 school districts look to use the technology in their classrooms or for business operations.

Titled Empowering Education Leaders: A Toolkit for Safe, Ethical, and Equitable AI Integration, the toolkit contains three sections. They are:
–Mitigating risks while safeguarding students’ privacy, security and civil rights.
–Building a strategy for integrating the use of AI tools that best fits students’ needs.
–Guiding the effective use of AI to boost teaching and learning.

Click here to access the toolkit.

Source K-12 Dive

One-third of Teenager Students Report Experiencing Racism in School (October 13, 2024)

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) results of a 2023 nationwide Youth Risk Behavior Survey released on October 8, 2024, Asian, multiracial, and Black students were the most likely to report having ever experienced racism in school. In fact,more than half of Asian students (57%) and nearly half of multiracial (49%) and Black (46%) students reported experiencing racism sometimes in their schooling. Non-White students reported experiencing racism in school at a rate two to three times higher than the 17% reported by White students.

In addition, poor mental health, suicide risk and substance use consistently ranked higher among students who reported ever experiencing racism in school when compared to students who said they had never faced a racist environment.

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CDC Study Focuses on Transgender High School Students and Those Questioning Gender Identity (October 12, 2024)

On October 8, 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of its first nationally representative survey data on transgender students, which showed that transgender students also had higher rates of bullying and poor mental health. In fact, CDC found that approximately 3% of the nation’s high school students are transgender, and another 2.2% say they are questioning their gender. In addition, slightly over a quarter of transgender students and the same portion of questioning students skipped school in 2023 because they felt unsafe, compared to just 8.5% of cisgender male students. About the same level also said they attempted suicide within the last year, as opposed to 5% of their cisgender male peers. Transgender and questioning students also had higher rates of bullying and poor mental health and the lowest rates of school connectedness when compared to their cisgender male and female peers.

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White House Garners 73,000 More School Helpers than Anticipated a Year Ahead of Schedule (October 12, 2024)

On October 11, 2024, the White House announced that a  national effort to put more adults in schools as tutors, mentors, coaches or support staff has exceeded its goal a year ahead of schedule. In fact, according to a spring survey of school principals by Rand Corp, more than 323,000 adults have responded by working in schools as volunteers or paid staff. The adults include AmeriCorps and other volunteers, college students, part-time and full-time staff of nonprofit organizations, as well as school staff hired for these roles or ones taking on additional duties.

The original goal set in 2022 called for at least 250,000 adults supporting school or after-school activities by summer 2025.

The effort is led by The National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS), a public-private collaboration among AmeriCorps, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University. NPSS developed a network of nonprofits, school districts and colleges to provide guidance, training, and technical assistance to participants.

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