As we round out 2022, we look back in appreciation for the indefatigable efforts of state leaders, and we are honored to support them and their teams as they serve our nation’s students.
Next year holds much promise as states continue to see the impact of their initiatives to accelerate learning and support student mental health and wellbeing. We are humbled by our recognition as the most important professional organization for chiefs and deputies and take very seriously our responsibility of working side-by-side with our members to improve education outcomes for all students.
Please join us in this glance back at just some of our accomplishments this year.
CCSSO launched the COVID Relief Data Project to analyze how states are using federal funding appropriated to state education agencies through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund. States have spent or committed 73% of the funds received to date.
According to our analysis, states have invested in $4.2 billion on tutoring and accelerated learning, $2.9 billion on out of school time and extended learning, and more than $1 billion on student and staff wellbeing and connection supports. Hear directly from state chiefs on the impact they are seeing from their spending in these videos.
Additionally this year, the Coalition to Advance Future Student Success, a group of 12 leading education organizations working together to ensure the effective and equitable use of COVID relief funds, ramped up telling the stories of how their members are working toward this goal. The Coalition in Action newsletter highlights the impact COVID relief funds are making in schools and the Coalition website hosts a resource library of best practices and exemplary work across its membership. The site’s Coalition Perspectives blog offers context into initiatives.
CCSSO’s advocacy work focused on providing sustained, intensive supports to states on administering ESSER and other federal education funds, on issues including allowable uses of funds, federal reporting and oversight, and program evaluation. In Congress, the team supported Commissioners from Nebraska and Tennessee with testimony at a September 2022 U.S. House Education and Labor subcommittee hearing. The chiefs discussed how their states were using federal relief dollars toward pandemic recovery. CCSSO also supported Connecticut Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker and 2022 National Teacher of the Year Kurt Russell when they testified on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in June on supporting students in recovering from the pandemic.
We were proud to see a 2021 survey by the RAND Corporation find that in states in CCSSO’s High Quality Instructional Materials and Professional Development (IMPD) Network, a greater proportion of teachers use at least one fully-aligned curriculum, compared to the national average. The Network in 2022 continued to highlight the tremendous progress states are making in supporting districts to ensure teachers have the resources they need to provide high-quality instruction, and we released a brief on how states are leveraging ESSER funding to promote the use of high-quality instructional materials and aligned professional development.
States had an opportunity to think differently about summer programming with ESSER funding and CCSSO this year continued its support of the nine-state State Summer Learning Network. This Network, a partnership between CCSSO and the National Summer Learning Association with support from The Wallace Foundation, released three state spotlights to share how the states approached their work.
Our National Teacher of the Year Program is as dynamic as ever. Kurt Russell, a veteran high school history teacher from Ohio, is the 2022 National Teacher of the Year. In his year of service, Russell is sharing his message that classrooms should better reflect the students in them, highlighting members of the state teacher of the year cohort through a live conversation series, and attending numerous events, including a White House State Dinner! State Teachers of the Year in 2022 shared the lessons that are the biggest hit with their students in this podcast series and offered tips for teachers in a series for First Lady Jill Biden’s Pinterest board.
CCSSO’s Collaboratives, offering premier learning with purpose for state education agency leaders, served more than 1,155 members in 2021-22. We are proud that a recent survey showed 91% of Collaborative members said they were satisfied with their membership’s relevance to their job.
And this is just a slice of our efforts this year. We grew our work around a Community of Innovation to support the acceleration of modernizing P20W statewide longitudinal data systems, offered resources to bring coherence to fragmented systems and more.
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