It's well known that there were some big gaps in student learning tied to

school shutdowns during the pandemic and difficult transitions with hybrid

classes, but a big question remains. How much did federal aid help students recover from those academic losses?

We now have some answers from new research, and Jeffrey Brown dives into the latest.

A pair of new studies show that the $190 billion the federal government gave in pandemic aid

for schools helps students catch up academically, but big gaps remain. Here to tell us about them is Laura Meckler,

National Education writer for the Washington Post. Thanks for joining us, Laura.

So in general terms first, we did see some gains even if moderate tell us about it.

Yes and we did see some gains there were deep losses from the pandemic between 2019 and

2022 and we just saw those were across the board rich districts

poor districts but especially poor districts saw big steep losses but

we did start to see some improvement between 2022 and spring of

2023. We don't yet have the results from this last testing in spring

2024, so we don't know, but obviously people are hoping that they'll see continued

improvement then but as of what we know right now kids are still behind. So that's a lot

of money to spend what kind of specific steps made the most difference?

Do we know?

Well, unfortunately, we don't really know because they wanted that money out the door

and there were very few strings attached.

Districts were not required to say how they were spending the money and

districts used it for a wide range of purposes.

Now let's remember that in the spring of 2021 when this money was first allocated

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