On Friday, the Trump administration took another step toward reining in wasteful government spending and narrowing Washington’s role in K-12 education.
The Department of Education announced that it would be modifying the liquidation period for states to spend remaining COVID-19 “relief” dollars, giving them until close of business on March 28 to obligate any remaining funds, rather than until March 2026—a lengthy extension previously granted by the Biden administration.
Background to the COVID-19 ‘Relief’ Spending
In 2020, Congress appropriated an unprecedented $189.5 billion in temporary funding for K-12 schools to defray pandemic-related costs. School districts originally had until Sept. 30, 2024, to obligate the last of those funds—the largest ($122 billion) tranche known as the American Rescue Plan—designating how they would spend the remaining money nearly five years after the pandemic began. The original liquidation deadline for that money was Jan. 28, 2025.
But on his way out the door, President Joe Biden extended the liquidation deadline all the way through March 2026, six years after the pandemic began. The Trump administration has now modified that liquidation period to close on March 31, 2025, giving states until close of business on Monday to submit reimbursements or liquidation requests for their remaining state allocations. The updated liquidation timeline affects ARP-ESSER funds for K-12 schools, ARP-EANS funds for private schools, and ARP-HCY funds for school wraparound services. In a press statement, the Department of Education noted:
COVID is over. States and school districts can no longer claim they are spending their emergency pandemic funds on ‘COVID relief.’ The Biden Administration extended the deadline for spending the money far beyond the intended purpose of the funds, and it is past time for the money to be returned to the Treasury as savings.
Indeed, half a decade on from the pandemic, schools should not still be contemplating how to spend the windfall Congress appropriated as a temporary measure, ostensibly designed to mitigate learning loss. As parents are all now painfully aware, the COVID-19 slush fund did not help students maintain their day-to-day classroom experience, support academic excellence, or ensure children were learning to read and do math on pace. Teachers unions’ continual push to keep schools closed long after experts knew it was safe to reopen them, long after Europe and other industrialized nations had done so, did immense harm to student learning. More spending from Washington wasn’t going to reverse the damage.
The money also had no chance at hedging against learning loss because updating school HVAC systems doesn’t teach kids phonics. With this unprecedented infusion of cash, schools upgraded their infrastructure, spending six times as much on building maintenance as they did on tutoring to prevent learning loss.
What’s more, they made permanent staffing decisions with temporary COVID-19 relief dollars. As Chalkbeat senior national education reporter Kalyn Belsha documents:
… half of all COVID relief dollars schools spent that year, or just under $25 billion, were spent on staff salaries and benefits. A good chunk of that went toward paying new social workers and school nurses, which schools added to their ranks in droves with the aid.
COVID-19 Money Accelerated Washington’s Education Spending Spree, With Little Impact
Washington has been on an education spending spree for decades. Throughout the 20th century, inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending increased on average 3.5% per year, every year. Education spending on a per-pupil basis has more than tripled in real terms since 1965, increasing from $5,053 during the 1963-64 school year—the year before the War on Poverty launched—to $18,614 during the 2020-21 school year. The $190 billion appropriated as part of COVID-19 “relief” was two-and-a-half times the Department of Education’s annual budget and was the largest infusion of cash into K-12 education in history.
That schools made permanent new staffing hires with temporary COVID-10 dollars is part of a counterproductive and ongoing trend in K-12 education. Since 1950, public schools have added personnel at a rate nearly four times the rate of growth in student enrollment. During the 1949-50 academic year, 70% of school personnel were classroom teachers. By 2008, that figure had dropped to just 50% meaning the teacher to nonteacher ratio was down to 1-to-1.
Teachers make up just 47.5% of school staff today. From 1950 to 2019, while the number of students increased 100%, the number of teachers increased 243% and the number of administrators and all other staff increased 709%.
The clearest evidence that the COVID-19 bonus cash didn’t help students was the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress results, which were heartbreaking. Reading outcomes for fourth and eighth graders fell an average of two points, declining further from what had already been historic lows in 2022. Reading scores declined in 48 out of 50 states. Disadvantaged students—the exact children decades of federal largesse was designed to help—fared the worst.
As the Trump administration rightly brings this chapter of the education spending spree to a close, states will be able to submit specific requests for exceptions. But five years on from COVID-19, the time has come to turn the page on superfluous spending and return that money to American taxpayers. It’s long past time.