New Tool Aims To Help States Learn ARP ESSER Promising Practices

As is often true in sports, when one team achieves success by using a certain style of play, other teams will seek to emulate those practices in hopes of improving their own results. Similarly, the Department of Education (ED) has partnered with the National Comprehensive Center to release a new tool that will allow states to share their progress in deploying American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) funds. The ARP Partnership, Assistance, Transformation, and Heightened Support (ARP PATHS) tool invites states to describe the strategies they are implementing that could serve as promising practices for other states and the nation in ensuring that ARP ESSER funds are used appropriately and effectively as intended by the law.

“Through ARP PATHS, states and districts will be able to more effectively and transparently communicate their efforts and share promising practices so that, across the country, we can do more of what works to ensure that our students, schools, and educators thrive,” said ED Secretary Miguel Cardona.

ARP PATHS includes a number of considerations for states as they build capacity and communicate their work to districts and the public. The tool includes six sections that are based on the ARP ESSER state plan application that all states have submitted, and ED has approved. For each section, states can indicate the implementation status, describe their states’ progress, and outline promising practices or impact. The section topics are safely reopening schools and sustaining safe operations, planning for the use of ARP ESSER funds, maximizing state-level funds to support students, supporting local educational agencies in planning for and meeting students’ needs, supporting the educator workforce, and monitoring and measuring progress.

In a release announcing the creation of the tool, ED highlighted some achievements states have made using ARP ESSER funds. Tennessee is using the funds to provide access to intensive, low-ratio tutoring over the next three years. When the program is fully operational, as many as 240,000 students will have access to 300-500 additional hours of targeted support through tutoring to address the lost instructional time from the pandemic.

Arkansas is using these funds to create the Arkansas Tutoring Corps, which includes recruitment, preparation and support for candidates to become qualified tutors to provide instruction or intervention to meet the academic needs of at-risk learners or students most impacted by lost instructional time. The Arkansas Tutoring Corps project aims to enhance learning experiences of students impacted by lost instructional time as a result of the pandemic and address gaps in foundational skills in mathematics and literacy.

Hopefully, this tool will allow states to learn from each other to find ways to best use this funding going forward.

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