A new study released this month by Kenneth Shores and Matthew Steinberg tackles the question of whether federal pandemic relief for public schools was provided in the right way and in the right amount. The study does some informed but essentially back-of-the-envelope math to estimate how much it would take to fix learning loss, and although the authors give a range, the number circulating in the headlines is $700 billion.

Not only is that estimate far more than the $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) federal COVID relief funding that went to schools, it’s also more than the Census’s figure for total current expenditures for all public schools in the US in FY 2020. However, this rough figure has a host of estimation problems, and a perspective problem to boot.