Districts Continue to Struggle with Staffing, Political Polarization, and Unfinished Instruction: Selected Findings from the Fifth American School District Panel Survey

Abstract

An American School District Panel (ASDP) survey administered in fall 2021 revealed district leaders' widespread concerns about teacher, substitute, and bus driver shortages, political polarization interfering with schooling, students' mental health, behavior, and attendance, and declining student enrollment. In this report, we revisit these concerns to assess whether the widespread problems that district leaders identified back in fall 2021 have persisted throughout the remainder of the 2021-2022 school year. This report also provides an update on the main ways that school districts are seeking to redress the negative effects of unfinished instruction because of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This is the second of two reports with results from the spring 2022 survey of the ASDP. [For the companion report, "State of the Superintendent -- High Job Satisfaction and a Projected Normal Turnover Rate. Selected Findings from the Fifth American School District Panel Survey," see ED621831.]