Digital learning state policy review

Susan Gentz is the founder of BSG Strategies and an education policy expert working to educate district leaders on funding, flexibility, and opportunities for innovation in state and federal policy.

The 2021 legislative session has been strange. Some states have met in person the entire session, some are hybrid, and some are completely remote. It sounds a lot like districts across the country. There were several bills introduced related to digital learning; however, many appeared to lose steam after the American Rescue Plan Act was enacted. The focus from state lawmakers turned to helping support the state education and local education agencies in their planning for the largest influx of federal education funds.

So far, 17 states have adjourned sine die (no further legislation will be considered this session) which means many bills have met their demise for this year.

Early Emerging Trends Update

We mentioned several bills at the beginning of session and a few have become law while others have either completely died or been left in committee with the almost certainty of failing up on adjournment. Of the early bills, Indiana passed a bill that requires the state board of education (state board) to adopt administrative rules to allow an organization to provide credit in alternative programs from non-school educational experience that applies or incorporates content area knowledge in lieu of a required or elective course.

Indiana also made a fix to their yearly count for virtual students. Without this fix, millions of dollars would be on the line for schools offering instruction online only. State law previously capped per-pupil funding for students who take at least half their classes virtually at 85% of full in-person student funding. Without this bill, school districts using hybrid formats or that only offer online instruction to minimize the potential spread of COVID-19 would likely lose 15% of their basic per-student funding, amounting to $855 per student.

Other Newly Enacted Laws

Kentucky needed to work through the average daily attendance count as well, and enacted a bill that allows school districts to request approval for more than 10 student attendance days under a nontraditional instruction plan related to the COVID-19 emergency. The bill requires a school to submit a non-traditional instruction plan for the 2021-2022 school year within the Comprehensive District Improvement Plan by May 1, 2021 and allows a school to count up to 30 minutes as instructional time when used for COVID-19 related activities for in-person instruction. The provisions of the Act are retroactive to the 2020-2021 school year and effective for the 2021-2022 school year. It is likely that we see several states grappling with this issue in future sessions.

In Oklahoma, a local district board of education is required to provide a program for teachers that emphasizes the importance of digital teaching and learning standards. The program must be completed the first year of a certified teacher that is employed by a school district, and then at a frequency as determined by the local board.


State Bills Addressing Stimulus Funds

While several of those early bills have stalled mostly in committee, the American Rescue Plan Act shifted focus for several states as they worked to appropriate and reconcile federal education funds with state budgets. The National Conference of State Legislatures has identified all of the state legislation that provides opportunities for K-12 education. For example, the state of Louisiana passed a bill that appropriates $8 million of the Coronavirus Relief Act to the Department of Education for computers and devices. Michigan appropriated $18 million for instructional recovery programs while Vermont appropriated $41 million for COVID-19 related costs. North Carolina specifically placed $500,000 to the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to be allocated to the State Library for the NC Kids Digital Library project to address learning loss resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic by providing children with increased access to digital learning resources in public libraries, including e-books, audiobooks, and videos.

The Rest of the Session

It’s challenging to identify true trends in the 2021 session. It was very predictable that the focus would be on COVID-19 at the state level, but the third round of stimulus funding took over as priority and left other bills to die before much debate. There are many year round states, and the rest of the part-time legislatures will continue to adjourn until mid-June; however, the focus of these states is not entirely on education.

The focus on appropriations this year made it difficult to work on policy fixes, but funding formulas, mechanisms, and certainly accountability and data reporting will take center stage for the 2022 session.