An American School District Panel (ASDP) survey administered in fall 2021 revealed district leaders' widespread concerns about teacher, substitute, and bus driver shortages; political polarization interfering with schooling; students' mental health, behavior, and attendance; and declining student enrollment. In this report, we revisit these…

Many studies have documented a large decline in students' mathematics achievement during and after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The question facing school districts now is how to help students recover. Since fall 2020, RAND researchers have repeatedly surveyed and interviewed district leaders who are members of the American…

This survey wanted to obtain a national picture of teacher and principal turnover at the end of the 2021-2022 school year and districts' staffing shortages at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, researchers surveyed 300 district and charter network leaders in the American School District Panel from October to December 2022. Key findings…

This is the second of three annual reports evaluating the implementation and effects of two Delaware weighted funding programs for disadvantaged K-12 schools during the 2019-2020 to 2021-2022 school years: Opportunity Funding and the Student Success Block Grant (SSBG). The authors also examined best practices and coronavirus pandemic adaptations…

Policymakers had hoped that the 2021-2022 school year would be a chance to recover from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic--related disruptions to schooling. Instead, media reports of staff shortages, heated or even violent school board meetings, increased student misbehavior, low student and teacher attendance, and enrollment declines…

School districts in the United States are responding to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in significantly different ways. The authors of this report fielded the third American School District Panel (ASDP) survey in June 2021 to discover what changes districts are making to their academic and nonacademic offerings for the upcoming…

This report is the first of three annual reports evaluating the implementation and effects of two newly expanded Delaware weighted education funding programs, the Opportunity Fund and the Student Success Block Grant (SSBG). The Opportunity Fund provides two streams of financial support--a flexible fund for local education agencies (LEAs) to fund…

The onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted school districts in the United States to offer remote schooling options for their K-12 students. The authors of this report fielded the third American School District Panel (ASDP) survey in June 2021 to assess districts' plans to offer both temporary and more-lasting remote…

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, progressively more complete data have shed light on the tremendous variation in districts' approaches to schooling. Some districts have provided fully remote learning since the outset of the pandemic, some have mostly provided in-person learning, and others have fallen somewhere in between. In this report,…

This report presents school district leaders' views about staff turnover, hiring, and districts' financial outlooks at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Based on the survey responses of 292 district leaders from the American School District Panel (ASDP), the authors found that teacher and principal turnover had not increased substantially…

School districts in the United States are responding to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in significantly different ways. The authors of this report fielded the third American School District Panel (ASDP) survey in June 2021 to discover what changes districts are making to their academic and nonacademic offerings for the upcoming…

In spring 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic led to an unprecedented and sweeping shift in the landscape of public schooling in the United States. Beginning in March, schools across the country closed their doors and adopted remote learning supports that varied in degree and type. In May 2020, researchers from the RAND…

U.S. school districts have taken widely varied approaches to reopening public schools for the 2020-2021 school year. The divergence stems from the highly localized approach to both schooling and addressing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and differences in COVID-19 transmission rates among communities. To develop a national…