How to Spend $100 Billion on Education
Now that President Barack Obama has signed into law a $787 billion economic recovery plan, including an unprecedented $100 billion for public schools, the next task is getting that money out to states. But exactly how that will happen and how each state will spend the money is being worked out.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan has told U.S. News that, in addition to saving and creating jobs, he wants to use the stimulus to innovate and improve schools. The education funding contained in the stimulus could give Duncan the leverage to do that. Besides nearly doubling the budget of the federal Department of Education over the next two years, the stimulus package sets aside $5 billion for states that can prove to Duncan that they are raising student achievement by 1) improving teacher quality and getting better teachers into high-poverty schools, 2) raising academic standards and creating better tests, 3) using data systems that can track individual student growth, and 4) supporting struggling schools.
If $5 billion sounds like a paltry sum compared with the gargantuan size of the stimulus package, it's considerably more that previous education secretaries had. Even former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who presided over a massive expansion of the federal role in education with the testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, seemed in awe of Duncan's windfall. She told the New York Times that "as much confidence as I have in Arne Duncan, there's an awesome opportunity for slippage with that much money moving through the meat grinder." The newspaper suggested, tongue in cheek, that she might be a jealous of her successor.
Spellings, however, raises a legitimate point. Several education observers have warned about the dangers of getting so much money out to schools in a hurry. Duncan and Obama have promised to distribute the money in a timely and transparent fashion. Much of the education aid is expected to flow to states before July 1, the start of the new fiscal year. But other funds, such as the $5 billion for states that innovate and raise achievement, will take longer to go out. Duncan and his aides are hammering out those details.
Many groups knowledgeable about the stimulus, including the National Conference of State Legislatures, believe that the $53.6 billion state stabilization fund, which includes $39.5 billion in direct aid to schools, will help local districts avoid layoffs and cuts to education services. One study by the University of Washington says that 574,000 education jobs would be lost if states cut education spending by 15 percent over the next three years. That has caused critics of the stimulus, mainly conservative groups, to question whether the aid will really spur meaningful reform.
The stimulus also includes $13 billion to help states close the achievement gap. That money will flow to states based on their populations of low-income residents. Another $12.2 billion will go to states to educate students with special needs.
There is also $2.1 billion in the stimulus for Head Start and Early Head Start. The money could allow an additional 124,000 low-income infants and children to participate in these programs. According to estimates, this will also create 50,000 new early education jobs. But some studies have raised doubt that these programs help disadvantaged kids be better prepared when they start school.
The stimulus also offers relief to college students. It provides $15.6 billion to increase the maximum Pell grant by $500. The additional aid is expected to help 7 million students pursue college degrees.
The stimulus does not include any money for school construction. But it does set aside $8.8 billion in the state stabilization fund that can be used to make repairs and renovations to crumbling school buildings.
The National Education Association, a national teacher's union, has these preliminary estimates of the federal money that will be flowing to states:
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Tags: education | No Child Left Behind | economic stimulus | Obama administration | education reform
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Getting back to Common Sense
The worst thing about the stimulus money is that it perpetuates all the expensive overhead, waste, and administration that the No Child Left Behind law created. Federal interference and now stimulus money is just building into the education system evermore worthless waste and paper pushing. Whereas if things got really tight and people started to take a hard look at what was fundamental to a good education it would be all the federal crap that got chopped. That’s why the feds are dumping in money now. It is the only way they can keep themselves in the game.
What has happened is that with the feds pushing the development of top-down management into the education system, administrators are now more important than teachers and find themselves on the chopping block instead of overhead, worthless testing, and administration, just like happens at any over bloated failing company.
Yet everyone knows that the teacher is the most important component of a good education. Common sense dictates that money should flow into the classroom to support the students and teacher. Administration in a functional organization is just there to support the teacher. Communities and parents that stop to think agree. Because of this the feds had to push money into the system to save teacher’s jobs to keep everyone fat dumb and happy about what is really going on and stall for time to get their agenda all firmly in place and institutionalized. For surely, if parents and communities saw all their teachers getting the axe they would start taking a far more critical look at where all their tax dollars were going… and become mindful of how, behind the screams of crisis, the feds are angling to seize power over education and siphoned off their critical tax dollars to throw money at special interests and publishers that are having a feeding frenzy at our children’s expense. All under the guise of testing…
Think I am crazy? In San Diego, which is one of the biggest districts in the nation, the district administration is following the feds lead and sucking all the money out of the classrooms to fund testing and tracking while laying off teachers and pushing up classroom sizes. They have taken so much money out of classrooms that now their budget for enterprise tracking software is more than the entire elementary education teacher’s payroll. Fortunately, communities are beginning to wake up and rebel and are making serious efforts to break away from the school district and take back their schools to again serve their students and communities instead of servicing the feds and their special interests.
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