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This project is part of the American School District Panel (ASDP), a research partnership between the RAND Corporation and the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College (CRPE). This report concludes research on five school systems to reveal the academic, social, and political challenges posed by the pandemic and what leaders and their staff are doing to address student learning loss. This report provides a possible explanation for why lackluster student test scores continue and why school systems struggle to implement and scale targeted student supports. Significant findings in this report include: (1) A crisis in the quality of classroom teaching is, leaders say, diverting time and resources away from targeted supports for students and toward improving classroom instruction; (2) Leaders report less day-to-day chaos, but unexpected challenges in staffing and teacher development have curtailed recovery efforts. As a result, their COVID recovery plans have been difficult, if not impossible, to carry out; (3) Plans for tutoring and other customized help have been undone by leaders' need to build (or rebuild) teachers' core skills; and (4) Millions of dollars and the best of intentions and efforts notwithstanding, leaders are struggling to overcome challenges to providing baseline services to students. [For the preceding report, see "Navigating Political Tensions over Schooling: Findings from the Fall 2022 American School District Panel Survey" (ED626297).]

The exact cause of teacher shortages is unknown. Some experts argue that shortages are localized, while others say that the lack of teachers is due to low unemployment and other factors. Regardless, school systems face big challenges with their teacher workforce, including finding enough teacher candidates and retaining the teachers they have, as well as filling specialized positions. These challenges require school systems to make changes to the role of the teacher. This brief identifies eight categories of strategies that school systems are using to reimagine their teacher workforce, then assesses the extent to which large and urban districts have adopted these strategies. Of the 100 large and urban school systems examined for this brief, 97 had strategies to address workforce challenges. But fewer than one in three of those districts were pursuing workforce strategies the authors would define as new or imaginative--and most focused on recruiting more candidates.

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 School District Panel (ASDP). A small portion of these data collections have focused on mathematics. In this report, the authors use these survey and interview data to build a national picture of how school districts across the country were approaching mathematics during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. They draw on a framework describing coherent instructional systems to motivate and organize this report. This report is a first look at district leaders' perspectives on some, but not all, of the enabling conditions and components that make up a coherent mathematics instructional system. The findings from these survey items can contribute to the national conversation about how best to help students recover unfinished mathematics learning.