School Districts Have Expanded Their Nonacademic Services for 2021–2022, While Academic Offerings Remain Much the Same: Selected Findings from the Third American School District Panel Survey

Abstract

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 2021-2022 school year, and whether parental demand has played any role in prompting districts to make these changes. In this report, the authors summarize key ASDP findings based on the responses of 292 district leaders, after weighting their responses to make them nationally representative. Survey results suggest that while public schools are expanding their nonacademic offerings, much of their academic offerings for 2021-2022 remain the same. The authors examine differences between pre-pandemic and 2021-2022 offerings among district subgroups in the areas of summer programming, tutoring, grade retention practices, technology-related services, student health and weekend meals, academic recovery measures, and scheduling. The authors also found that most district leaders did not perceive a strong parental demand for changes to their children's schooling;however, there were some notable exceptions among leaders of urban, suburban, and majority-students of color districts, even though the correlation between perceived demand and district provision is currently weak. Parents' demands may still change public education in the long run, but the authors did not find evidence for this thus far. [This report was prepared by the RAND American Educator Panels.]