With the two-year anniversary of the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act just a month away, that much-feared funding cliff for states and school districts is quickly approaching.
So it seems fitting to take stock of which states have already burned through most of their stimulus cash, and which still have a sizable chunk left to spend...
EdMoney now has the most up-to-date numbers on how fast school districts are spending their federal stimulus dollars. Our database includes state stabilization funds, Title I and IDEA supplemental grants, as well as other miscellaneous awards. It is believed to be the only site that offers district-by-district breakdowns of education stimulus grants nationwide.
The data is linked to the federal Common Core of Data, so you can even match your districts to others of similar size.
We're now aggregating links, blog posts and data on stimulus money flowing to states and districts around the U.S. We're adding more all the time, more links, more data, more everything.
Now comes your part: Can you help us? Do you know something about how stimulus was used in your state or – more importantly – your district? Register and contribute!
Tell us what you know, small or large. Find your state or district and help us track one of the largest infusions of federal money into local education in history.
The U.S. Department of Education has approved an additional $176 million in federal stimulus funds that will help Kentucky save jobs of teachers in the coming year.
Without the money, “we would have laid off lots of teachers,” said Terry Holliday, the state’s education commissioner.
The funds mean that Kentucky has now been allocated more than $1 billion in education funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in 2009 to stimulate a staggering national economy.
State officials had budgeted in anticipation of the latest funds for the coming fiscal year, according to Holliday. Congress had made this category of education funding available for both 2010 — used by Kentucky schools in their current budgets — and for 2011.
But receiving the second year’s funds required approval of a separate grant application, which was announced Friday by federal education officials.
The new funding will be earmarked toward fiscal stabilization, a category that has enabled school districts to preserve teacher jobs.
To qualify for the funding, Kentucky had to document such things as how it has used student data and evaluations of teachers and principals for educational improvements.
Holliday said that while the latest grant will cushion budgets for another year, “My biggest concern going forward is fiscal year 2012.” He said he hopes Congress works out more funding for that year to prevent major cuts...
The U.S. Department of Education has outlined ways school districts should use their shares of the federal stimulus package, which could provide up to $100 billion for K-12 education over two years. The main chunks of money flowing to districts come from several pots, and many of the suggestions below can be funded through multiple sources.This from Ed Week by way of KSBA:
Local officials crying foul as governors grab for aid
Desperate for cash to fill growing budget deficits, state governments are starting to tangle with federal and local officials over a $39.8 billion pot of economic-stimulus money that was designed to prop up the budgets of local school districts, but is increasingly being eyed as a patch for states’ own financial woes.
Vague language and loopholes in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—the stimulus package signed into law in February by President Barack Obama—are sparking questions about how much discretion states have over education stimulus funding. Mayors and school boards in a number of states fear being shortchanged by revenue-hungry governors and legislatures.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is putting state-level officials on notice that spending the first chunk of stimulus money unwisely could jeopardize aid that his office will distribute later.
“If states are doing things that are not in the best interests of children, they are just very simply going to disqualify themselves and take themselves out of the running for billions of dollars,” Mr. Duncan said in an interview last week.
Examples of such power struggles are piling up across the country.
In Rhode Island, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, a Republican, wants to cut state education funding in the next budget year by about $37 million, free up that money for other purposes, and use federal stimulus money to fill in the education gaps.
In Kansas, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat who has been tapped to become Mr. Obama’s secretary of health and human services, is objecting to the legislature’s pursuit of $26 million in K-12 cuts to help shore up the state’s $680 million budget deficit, even as Kansas is expecting about $387 million in federal education stimulus aid.
And in Ohio, under a new funding formula proposed by Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, some districts would get little or no additional money over the next two fiscal years, even though they’re supposed to get a boost from the stimulus package through the federal Title I and special education programs...
This from Politics K-12:There's no explicit language in the stimulus package linking salary to student performance. However, the stimulus does provide an additional $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund under the U.S. Department of Education. This now-larger pot of money will be used, as it was before, to fund pay-for-performance programs in school districts. Read more about the program here.
... one of the "assurances" that governors have to make to receive their chunk of the state stabilization money is to take steps to address equitable distribution of “highly qualified,” experienced, and in-field teachers across all schools, including in very poor schools. This has been a provision under the No Child Left Behind Act that hasn't been very well enforced, so it will be interesting to see what education secretary Arne Duncan does about this. I did ask Duncan specifically about the equitable teacher distribution provision during C-SPAN's Newsmakers show, and he seemed more inclined toward incentives than enforcement...
So President Obama caused a bit of a stir when he picked a charter school for his first visit to a public school.
Now, Education Secretary Arne Duncan will use his first "Education News" TV show appearance tonight from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. to address the topic: "Charter Schools: School Reform that Works." You can watch it at very odd hours on TV on channels like The Learning Channel, or on public broadcasting stations. It looks like it's also available via webcast. The show is a longstanding Education Department initiative to communicate education information to parents...
Charter schools, in particular, are increasingly appealing to parents, and for good reason. As laboratories for new and challenging educational strategies, these schools prove that breaking tradition and establishing a high bar for performance can yield extraordinary results for students. Many charter schools boast strong test scores along with impressive attendance and graduation rates, which are the result of the freedoms that these schools offer. They allow administrators the freedom to innovate, teachers the ability to be creative, parents the opportunity to be involved, and students the right to learn—creating a partnership that leads to improved achievement. Charter schools often “raise the bar”, and in turn, stimulate the entire public school system to improve.
The President’s education plan proposes to double the funding for the federal Charter Schools Program with the goal of increasing the number of successful charter schools among states that are committed to improving academic accountability.
Today, over 4,500 charter schools serve over 1.3 million children in 40 states and D.C.
"It's also an opportunity to redefine the federal role in education, something we're thinking a whole lot about," Duncan said recently. "How can we move from being (about) compliance with bureaucracy to really the engine of innovation and
change?"
The bill includes a $5 billion fund for innovations, an amount that might not seem like much, considering the bill's $787 billion price tag. But it is massive compared with the $16 million in discretionary money Duncan's predecessors got each year for their own priorities.
President Barack Obama said in a prime-time news conference this week that more money for education must be followed by more reform. Meanwhile, Congress is considering at least $80 billion in expenditures for education programs. Obama waants something in return."I think there are areas like education where some in my party have been too resistant to reform and have argued only money makes a difference. And there have been others on the Republican side or the conservative side who said, 'No matter how much money you spend, nothing makes a difference, so let's just blow up the public school systems.' And I think that both sides are going to have to acknowledge we're going to need more money for new science labs, to pay teachers more effectively, but we're also going to need more reform, which means that we've got to train teachers more effectively, bad teachers need to be fired after being given the opportunity to train effectively, that we should experiment with things like charter schools that are innovating in the classroom, that we should have high standards."
"I visited a school down in South Carolina that was built in the 1850s," Obama said.The statement seemed to be a response to GOP lawmakers—and some Democrats—who say that the proposed stimulus package working its way through Congress pumps too much money into schools, without enough strings...
...Obama made it clear that he also considers federal funding of school construction to be a key economic stimulus and investment in the future, even though a huge chunk of the funding for school facilities is slated be stripped out of the Senate's bill as
part of an agreement forged by moderate lawmakers to win passage of the measure.
"Kids are still learning in that school, as best they can. ... It's right next to a railroad. And when the train runs by, the whole building shakes and the teacher has to stop teaching for a while. The auditorium is completely broken down; they can't use it. So why wouldn't we want to build state-of-the-art schools with science labs that are teaching our kids the skills they need for the 21st century, that will enhance our economy, and, by the way, right now, will create jobs?"
Along with an infusion of money for schools, the economic-stimulus package working its way through Congress would give governors unprecedented control over how federal K-12 dollars are spent, adding to a long-standing debate over who should control federal education aid.
Congress historically has given state education officials—chief state school officers or state boards of education—authority to allocate such money using tightly controlled federal formulas.
But governors have long argued that they have the constitutional authority to ensure that their states properly oversee public education, and so should have a significant say in how federal education aid is spent. The stimulus legislation—which the Senate was still amending last week—would give them that power, if only temporarily...
