The CARES Act created the Elementary and Secondary Relief Fund (ESSER) which awarded $13.5 billion to states and districts as formula grants based on the same proportion that each state receives under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act under Title I-A. Districts are free to use these funds for whatever they deem to be essential for providing services for staff and students with no directives from Congress on specific uses and must be used by September 30, 2022.
The CRRSA awarded $82 billion for education stabilization Fund. This includes $54.3 billion for K-12 schools, largely delivered through Title I funding. This is about four times what schools received in ESSER I. The legislation provides that districts may use the funds to address learning loss, improve school facilities and infrastructure to reduce the risk of transmitting the coronavirus, and purchase education technology. These funds must be spent by September 30, 2023.
The ARPA awarded $122 billion for the education stabilization fund- requiring 20% to be used for Addressing Learning Loss by September 30, 2024. This issue is huge for districts across the country with findings identifying that, “Los Angeles, Clark County, Wake County, and New York City all plan to deliver less than half of a normal school year’s worth of instruction for students of all ages. That translates into 433 lost hours for a fifth-grader in New York City and 558 hours in Los Angeles. Depending on the length of a school day, these losses are the equivalent of 60 to 100 days of lost learning time.”
School systems can use all three rounds of ESSER Funds (ESSER, ESSER II, or ESSER III) to purchase ClassLink as part of their efforts to accelerate learning and prepare for the future.
ClassLink meets congressional requirements including addressing learning loss, purchasing educational technology, implementing activities to maintain the operation and continuity of services, and improving cybersecurity.
If you’re interested in speaking with someone about using ESSER funding to purchase ClassLink, fill out the form below. A ClassLink representative will be in touch.
Thank you for your interest. Someone from our team will reach out to you soon. In the meantime, hear what your colleagues are saying about ClassLink.
Case StudiesWhether you call it learning loss, unfinished learning, or learning gaps, schools are sorting out ways to bring students up to speed after a long stretch of remote learning. In this post, we share what educators and education leaders are doing during the regular school year and summer school to help students catch up on missed learning opportunities.
In all the excitement of stimulus funds coming down to the local level and the requirements of addressing lost learning time, many new ideas are being floated on how to help students once full-time in-person instruction begins again. An idea being discussed by districts across the country is the idea of extended learning time.
Last year we shared data highlighting the remote learning experiences of ClassLink schools in the spring of 2020. The data painted a picture of schools making quick transitions to remote learning with relatively stable use compared to pre-pandemic numbers. With the fall semester complete, we revisited ClassLink Analytics data to see how student engagement with digital resources had evolved.