The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provides roughly $123 billion for K-12 education through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER III), and requires states to set aside 5 percent of those funds and districts to set aside 20 percent of those funds to address learning loss through evidence-based interventions that respond to students’ academic and social and emotional needs. The act also allocates an additional 1 percent each of those funds specifically for summer learning and afterschool, or about $1.25 billion each.
To help districts and states make decisions about spending as well as about how to implement programs, in March 2021 Wallace summarized the evidence on outcomes and implementation guidance from our work in four short briefs on afterschool coordination systems, principal leadership, social and emotional learning, and summer learning. Each includes a hyperlinked bibliography of relevant research.
In addition, in July 2021, Wallace submitted two comment letters on U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona’s Proposed Priorities and Definitions: Secretary’s Supplemental Priorities and Definitions for Discretionary Grants Programs. One letter urges the Department to broadly define out-of-school time to ensure that readers know summer learning is a permitted use of funds; the other letter urges the Department to refer to “teachers, principals and other school leaders,” so that readers know that investing in principal effectiveness is a permitted use of funds.