Geraint Thomas hopes his Giro d'Italia luck has changed after inheriting the leader's maglia rosa following Remco Evenepoel's Covid withdrawal.

For nearly a decade, America’s students have been backsliding on the nation’s report card, which evaluates their command of math, science, U.S. history, and reading. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, first began displaying the decline in 2015—when math scores were, on level, five points lower than expected. But even those numbers could fall, and during the pandemic they did.

[From the June 2011 issue: The failure of American schools]

Roughly 40 percent of eighth graders scored below the basic level in U.S. history, and only 13 percent of students were “proficient” in the subject, according to NAEP results released this month. Civics scores were down as well. Last October, the same test showed that, across nearly every demographic group, scores were down in math, science, and reading.

Students need help catching up. And experts seem to have some consensus about what teachers and administrators should do. They should spend more instructional time on history and civics; both subjects have received less time since the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. They should also spend time helping students with their reading comprehension. In addition, some people add, schools should spend more time on math and science to improve those scores as well.

Each of these ideas seems simple enough. But they are all based on an assumption that schools have the resources—time, money, and people—to make this happen. There is only so much instruction time—unless states add weeks on to the school year, as New Mexico recently did. And reallocating resources on this scale takes time, while the kids who need help need it now. America appears to have no way of addressing this crisis, particularly in the hardest-hit schools, on a timescale that would actually help those kids succeed in the long run.

Before the pandemic, many school districts—particularly in high-poverty areas—already had very difficult problems on their hands. Teachers reported being twice as stressed as adults in other professions did; on average, districts had just returned to the levels of per-student funding they had received prior to the Great Recession; and national assessment scores were trending in a negative direction. A bright spot, however, was that most administrators said they felt ready to take on the challenge of leading their schools. In 2019, a survey from the National Association of Secondary School Principals found that 63 percent of principals “strongly agreed” when asked if they were generally satisfied with leading their school. Just four years later, however, only a third of principals are able to say the same; and nearly 40 percent believe they will leave the profession in the next three years.

[Read: What school-funding debates ignore]

“We act like we were starting from a great place in February 2020,” Jess Gartner, a former social-studies teacher who founded Allovue, a tech company that specializes in K–12 finance, told me. “So much of [our system] is held together with duct tape and glue. When you have a scenario like COVID that really threatens the stability of even a high-functioning district, of course we’re going to see disproportionate impacts on those districts that were already teetering on a precipice of insolvency and instability to begin with,” she said.

America’s school system is structured around local control of public education—so much so that federal funds make up, on average, only 8 to 10 percent of school funding each year. That has often changed during moments of crisis. In an effort to stabilize schools during the pandemic, federal lawmakers included more than $120 billion in the American Rescue Plan to help them reopen and prevent “learning loss.” Some districts used the money to hire counselors to assist students with mental-health needs, or to supply students with laptops; others used the money to revamp their HVAC systems to provide better air filtration and get students back in classrooms; leaders also provided summer-learning opportunities for students to make up for lost time. Most districts did not seek to hire additional faculty with the onetime injection of funding. Some did, though. Woodland Hills, in Pennsylvania, for example, reinstated 70 full-time positions that had been axed in 2019.

In a way, that funding provided another piece of chewing gum to plug the holes in the education-funding infrastructure. And what schools were able to achieve with it may have prevented further declines on the NAEP and similar assessments. But now districts worry about what will happen when that money goes away.

“The federal funding budget that we're negotiating right now—the one that Republicans want to add deep cuts to—those funding cuts would come to fruition at the exact same time that American Rescue Plan dollars dry up” in 2024, Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director at the School Superintendent’s Association, told me. “So as much as the federal government wants to drive this narrative of doing more to close achievement gaps and close testing scores, we’ll see the end of ARP dollars, and you’ll see the rescission of federal funding levels.” Add the prospect of a recession—which would bring with it a loss of revenue for schools—and the situation shades more dire.

Districts that used federal money to hire more teachers are readying those faculty for layoffs. Summer programs may soon sunset. Though some efforts—like distributing internet-enabled devices to close the broadband gap or hiring additional counselors—may not go away, school leaders will need to find alternative funding sources for them, which could mean cuts elsewhere.

[Read: The biggest problem for America’s schools]

The federal government is unlikely to step in once again. “I’ve been here 15 years now, and the only time I’ve seen an infusion of funds of the magnitude we’re talking about was the great recession, we saw an infusion of funding during COVID, and then we see an infusion of funding and resources after any major school shooting,” Ng told me. In an ideal world, she said, Congress would fully fund IDEA—the federal program that helps schools serve students with disabilities—which would free up the billions of state and local dollars that currently cover the shortfall to go back into the general education budget. Congress has not given a hearing to a bill to fully fund the program in more than a decade.

The experts I spoke with agree that there will likely be a wave of downsizing—layoffs, furloughs, or even school closures—if this confluence of funding woes is not addressed. And those most in need of additional help will again be left without it.