Kentucky Still Alive in Phase 2 of Race to the Top

Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced 19 finalists, including Kentucky, in the second phase of Race to the Top today. These states will now compete for a share of the $3.4 billion in the interview portion of the competition. 17 other states left the competition empty handed.

The finalists will be invited to send up to five people to argue their virtues before a panel of US Education Department judges in Washington during the week of August 9.

The amount of money remaining in the pot, however, will depend on which states may be selected in front of Kentucky. The list of states includes: Arizona, California, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. All finalists scored above 400 points on a 500-point scale. But if a few larger states are picked ahead of Kentucky the amount of remaining funds may dwindle. If Rep. David Obey's bill prevails in congress that amount could be $800 million less.

The winners will be announced in late August or early September.

Michele McNeil at Politics K-12 reckons,

...if New York, Florida, and California win and are awarded the maximum amount allowed by the Education Department's rules, they'll eat up $2.1 billion, or more than half of the remaining funds. Altogether, the states are asking for $6.2 billion, far more than the $3.4 billion that's available.

EduJobs Bill on Life Support?

Last week Obama administration officials reiterated the president's threat to veto a proposed $10 billion education jobs fund measure if the new aid for schools comes at the expense of existing reform programs. Approved by the House on July 1 and awaiting reconciliation with a Senate version, the supplemental appropriations bill would fund the $10 billion intended to stave off teacher layoffs by trimming $500 million and $200 million from the Race to the Top and Teacher Incentive Grant programs, respectively, as well as another $100 million from the public charter school program. Nonetheless, the officials, including U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes, made clear that they hope to avoid a veto by working with senators to identify appropriate offsets to pay for the bill.

At Politics K-12, Alison Klein writes,

Back when it was looking like Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, was going to trim unspent funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to pay for edujobs, I thought it was pretty likely he'd take money out of the $650 million Investing in Innovation or 'i3' Fund. Instead, he ended up targeting the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund.

Klien's snooping suggests the reason for avoiding i3 may well be "that many folks in the House of Representatives were asked by non-profit organizations in their districts to write letters of support for i3 applications." As Michele McNeil reported, there are 1,698 applications for the fund, many of whom sought their congressperson's support...creating a sort of built-in public relations and lobbying campaign.

Klein writes,

You think getting the edujobs bill through the U.S. House of Representatives was hard, what with the whole Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., versus the Whithe House thing, and the veto threat, and the Polis letter?

Well, that was a cake-walk compared to what is likely to happen in the Senate. Over at This Week in Education, Alexander Russo has a headline saying that the bill is "dead."

Is the bill dead? Alison doesn't think so - quite yet - but finds it necessary to keep taking the bill's pulse.

Supporters told the Ed Week reporter that EduJobs may be attached to a Small Business Administration bill.

As for that $800 million package of cuts to Race to the Top, charters, and the teacher Incentive Fund, no official word yet, but for now it appears unlikely, folks say, that those offsets will be part of the final package. (Of course, that would mean the Senate would have to find another $800 million in cuts...which could be messy.)

Klein thinks that those programs will most likely be spared, given this letter and also the veto threat.

Latest Edujobs Draft Has $10 Billion To Prevent Layoffs

This from Politics K-12:

House Democratic leaders are circulating a draft of a scaled-down version of the edujobs bill that would include $10 billion to prevent teacher layoffs.

For those keeping score at home, the $10 billion would be a significant decrease from the $23 billion that Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, initially sought to stave off staff reductions. Conservative Democrats balked at the
$23 billion pricetag and the fact that the bill would add to the deficit.

This time around, there's a lot less money, and the spending would be offset by about $12 billion in reductions to other programs, including an $800 million cut in funding for new discretionary programs in the U.S. Department of Education....

Money from the Education Jobs Fund could not be used for equipment, utilities, renovation, or transportation. And the draft bars states from using any of the money for "Rainy-Day Funds" or to pay off debt.

The money would be attached to an emergency spending bill financing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That vehicle could complicate matters, since many progressive Democrats would like to vote against war funding.

The draft also includes $4.95 billion to help shore up the Pell Grant program, which helps low-income students pay for college. That's not quite enough to make up the gap in the program, but it will help, leaving a shortfall of about $717 million, advocates say. The Pell shortfall has ramifications for key K-12 programs, such as Title I and special education, because they are financed under the same legislation. If there needs to be additional funding for Pell grants, that might mean less money for those programs...

Dems Move to Kill Reading First

Typical partisan wrong-headedness: House panel uses bad study to justify killing a good program tainted by Bush Administration schennagans - throws baby out with the bath water.

This from EducationWeek:

House Panel Would Kill ‘Reading First’ Funding

The controversial federal Reading First program would be eliminated under a fiscal 2009 spending measure approved unanimously today by a House Appropriations subcommittee.

In explaining the decision to zero out the program, Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, cited the results of a preliminary federal evaluation of Reading First, released May 1, which found that the program has had no impact on students’ reading comprehension.

Reading First “has been plagued with mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and cronyism, as documented by the inspector general,” Rep. Obey said, referring to a series of reports by the U.S. Department of Education’s watchdog that suggested conflicts of interest had occurred among officials and contractors who helped implement the program in its early years.

“Moreover, a scientifically rigorous study released by the Department of Education found that the program has no discernible impact on student reading performance,” Rep. Obey, who is also the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles education funding, said in reference to the evaluation by the Institute of Education Sciences, an arm of the department....