{"id":10715,"date":"2021-09-09T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.coreeducationllc.com\/blog2\/?p=10715"},"modified":"2021-09-05T18:14:56","modified_gmt":"2021-09-05T22:14:56","slug":"evidence-requirements-of-federal-covid-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coreeducationllc.com\/blog2\/evidence-requirements-of-federal-covid-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"Evidence Requirements of Federal COVID Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Recently, Nora Gordon explained the evidence requirements of federal COVID aid in an article for Future Ed. Excerpts of the piece appear below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The American Recovery Plan\u2019s $123 billion Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) fund requires that educators spend a significant portion of the money on things that have been found through research to make a difference for students. In reality, federal policymakers have given the education sector wide latitude in the evidence they bring to bear in spending Covid aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Districts, which receive the bulk of ESSER funds, must spend 20 percent of their money to address learning loss through the implementation of \u201cevidence-based\u201d interventions. States must also reserve funds for evidence-based interventions to address learning loss (5 percent of the total the state receives), to support evidence-based summer enrichment programs (1 percent of the total), and to support evidence-based comprehensive after-school programs (1 percent of the total).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does evidence-based mean? The ARP uses the same definition as the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which establishes four tiers of evidence and requires a subset of struggling schools to use the top three levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike ESSA, though, the Covid relief dollars can be spent on interventions with any<\/em> of the four tiers of evidence, including the least demanding. That includes spending options that don\u2019t appear in evidence lists or research clearinghouses. In its latest guidance<\/a>, released in May, the U.S. Department of Education again clarified that any of the four tiers \u201ccounts.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most permissive option is for evidence that \u201cdemonstrates a rationale.\u201d That\u2019s because you don\u2019t need a study of the specific activity, strategy, or intervention to demonstrate a rationale for its effectiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What constitutes a rationale? The new guidance<\/a> describes it like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n