The Delta Issue #12

ESSER is ending. Here’s one big thing any state leader can do to make education spending more efficient.

By: Kunjan Narechania

Hi, friends, Kunjan Narechania here.

It’s the end of an era. ESSER is over. Since the pandemic upended education in 2020, many things in public education will never be the same, but one thing remains stubbornly unchanged: the system states use to distribute their federal and state grant dollars to school districts.

This is the way it has worked for decades: Every year, school districts compete for a hodge-podge of state and federal grants tied to individual programs with specific aims. A single school district might create 30 different budgets to fulfill 30 different grant applications that must be submitted on 30 different timelines to siloed offices within the state education department. This is what was happening in Louisiana in 2017, and what still happens in many states across the country.

This scheme is not only an administrative burden for district staff (many of whom are in their own siloes at the central office), it’s also a wildly inefficient use of state dollars. District superintendents cannot rationally run a budget when they’re notified about all these grants on different timelines, because they never know how much money they have.

As states look for new ways to support cash-strapped districts in a post-ESSER world, being more efficient with public dollars could make all the difference.

Let’s look at an example:

A district’s Title I grant officer, its IDEA grant officer, and its literacy lead each think their students need new Chromebooks for the coming year. These three employees rarely interact with one another outside of monthly all-team meetings because their grant-writing work hardly ever overlaps. The district Title I officer includes 2,000 Chromebooks in the Title I budget. The district IDEA officer includes 2,000 Chromebooks in the IDEA budget, not knowing that 2,000 Chromebooks are already on their way. The district literacy lead applies to a state literacy grant to purchase additional Chromebooks.

Suddenly, there are three Chromebooks for every student who needs one, and the state has a redundancy in its budget. I didn’t make this example up — it literally happened while I was the Assistant State Superintendent in Louisiana. When you have 30 different plans and budgets run by siloed offices, you will have duplicative purchases and competing purchases, and none of it will make sense in the life of a teacher. And, when you have 30 plans and 30 budgets on 30 different timelines, you cannot have one coherent plan for students. It’s no wonder the U.S. spends 34% more per pupil than our peer countries even though our students perform no better.

Instead of asking for 30 plans with 30 budgets in 30 grant applications, what if states asked districts for just one?

In Louisiana, that’s exactly what we did. We called it the Super App. No more piecing together district budgets from a smattering of funding streams — we wanted districts to internalize state priorities and have a cohesive plan to achieve them. The result?

The amount of time district teams spent on grant applications was dramatically reduced.
District offices met together to complete one grant application, thereby breaking down internal siloes.
Because the Super App focused on the state’s most important priorities (high-quality instructional materials and professional learning) districts aligned their state and local funds and their federal dollars and applied for additional grant funding to support these purchases all at once.

All of this led to an important outcome for students: All districts but one switched to high-quality instructional materials and professional learning in year one.

At a time when districts are stretching to do more for kids with less room for error in their budgets, now is the time to quickly transition to more strategic, streamlined, and effective planning and budgeting. And states are catching on — Arkansas just released the AR App in June.

Here’s what more states should do:

✅ Set priorities for funding that focus on achieving key improvements for students

✅ Align grants to support each spending priority and maximize the dollars that are going towards achieving those student outcomes

✅ Design an application and application process that helps districts create plans and budgets aligned with state priorities

✅ Provide technical assistance and guidance to help districts build a strong plan for student learning and federal grant spending

✅ Evaluate applications based on a set of measurable criteria and consider giving additional discretionary awards

✅ Approve and allocate funding in a way that incentivizes actionable plans to boost student achievement

Let’s Get Muddy

Want to learn how the Super App is working to transform education in Arkansas?

On the Curriculum HQ blog, Jocelyn Pickford has the interview with Stacy Smith , Deputy Commissioner of the @Division of Elementary and Secondary Education at the Arkansas Department of Education .