What’s inside the stimulus package for education?

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What’s inside the stimulus package for education?

Third in a series

By Jaime L. Hartman Jan 24 2009, 11:22 AM

More than $100 billion of the massive stimulus package is marked for education programs in both K-12 education and higher education, much of it through existing laws and programs such as Pell Grants, IDEA, and Title I. Republicans have criticized spending in this area as being too slow to take effect, but observers predict that much of the education spending will remain since few lawmakers want to be perceived as anti-education.

The largest education item is $20 billion for renovation and modernization of school buildings, including technology upgrades and energy efficiency improvements. That total number includes $14 billion for K-12 and $6 billion for higher education as well as $100 million for school construction in communities that lack a local property tax base because they contain non-taxable federal lands such as military bases or Indian reservations and $25 billion specifically for charter schools – a popular campaign issue for Democrats and Republicans alike.

State and local governments typically bear the burden for un- or under-funded state mandates imposed by the federal government with the goal of improving K-12 education and often have to cut other programs in order to pay for the mandated ones. Many will be grateful to see that this bill includes grant money to help them meet some of these mandates, such as $13 billion in formula grants to increase the federal share of mandated special education costs. Another $13 billion for Title I programs for disadvantaged children and $66 million for formula grants to provide serves for homeless children recognize the unique strain the economic downturn places on schools.

Merit pay is a much discussed, very controversial issue in education reform circles and generally opposed by teacher unions who typically support Democratic candidates. During the campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama expressed support for the concept, pledging to work with unions to develop merit standards. Perhaps recognizing the value of financial incentives for governments as well as teachers, the bill includes $200 million for competitive grants to school districts and states who wish to provide incentives for teachers and principals who raise student achievement and close achievement gaps.

Democrats are also attempting to use this bill as way to increase federal support of higher education through financial aid. $15.6 billion would be used to increase Pell Grants, $490 million would go to college work-study programs, and $50 million would be given to the Department of Education to administer student aid programs

Finally, the bill would benefit early childhood development programs for children in low-income families and those with disabilities. $2.1 billion is marked for Head Start, which bill supporters say would help an additional 110,000 disadvantaged preschoolers enter kindergarten on equal footing as their peers and $600 million would go to formula grants for children with disabilities age 2 and younger.

While some of the education spending in the bill will put people quickly to work building schools or re-wiring existing ones, much of the education spending should improve the nation’s economic health by making higher education more accessible, K-12 education of higher quality, and give more students the start they need to be successful. But it will take time to filter down and will require patience – a trait Americans are typically short on. With broad agreement that education is the key to our competitiveness in the future and disagreement about which methods will provide the greatest positive impact, this will certainly not be the last we hear about education during this Congress or presidency.

Also in the series:

[+] What’s inside the stimulus package for healthcare?

[+] What’s inside the stimulus package for clean energy?

[+] What’s inside the stimulus package for infrastructure?

[+] K-12 education coming to a computer near you

[+] Teacher in trouble for turning students into slaves

Read More: Education (ED), Education, Others

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Nicholas J.
January 25, 2009 5:15 PM

Almost anything Obama does will be an improvement. The damage done to education did not start with the Bush Administration but with the tax cuts of the Reagan Administration. Before WWII, very few Americans could afford to go to college, and though after WWII, the GI Bill of Rights allowed those who served in the military to attend college, by 1955, college attendence started falling off as those who served during WWII and the Korean War finished their education. However the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik sent the United States into a panic regarding its technological superiority and the education of its citizens in the sciences, math, foreign languages, area studies, geography and even library science. The government immediately started offering grants and scholarships to allow Americans to attend college in these fields. They ran into an immediate problem. When colleges started looking for professors of physics to fill the over 400 positions created to teach the new students, they could only find 250 to fill the available jobs. In 1965 the U.S. government passed the Higher Education Act of 1965, which resulted in the most highly educated generation in America. Government subsidization of grants and scholarships which did not have to be repaid to the government accounted for 80 percent of all financial aid, while the remaining 20 percent consisted of low interest student loans. More important, there were almost no financial means tests for the grants or scholarships. Also the government provided supports that subsidized the ability of universities to keep tuitions low. The dollar amount that the student paid in tuition rarely exceeded a fifth of the actual cost of tuition if the government had not been subsidizing it. The baby boom generation which is the best and most widely educated generation America has seen largely got an education that they could never have afforded before the government and the generation that preceded the boomers had not decided that educating the next generation was critical to the nations economic well being, as well as its national security. This education allowed the baby boomers to become the most affluent generation in the nations history as well, but the response of the baby boomers to this national largesse was to take a sharp turn to the political right and decided that now they they had gotten theirs, and had become more affluent than their their parents generation could dream of, they had no intention of paying the taxes to support the education of the next generation. Their own childrens generation. The boomers went to work during the greatest expansion of job creation in U.S. history. They attended college during the time of the best student financial aid. They had a decent social safety net that still existed in response to the great depression. They played in government funded parks that were well maintained and safe due to government funding. When the boomers came of age and took charge, they immediately cut student financial aid, they sent jobs overseas, they slashed education funding, and cut funding to maintain public spaces. They made the well educated affluent more affluent, while they refused to pay the same taxes that others paid to provide them with educational and therefore economic opportunities to allow the next generation the same. All the while asserting how they made it on their own. Their parents, the Greatest Generation, sacrificed, volunteered to protect their nation and its future, while their children, the Greediest Generation, the Me Generation simply takes and takes and takes.

kayo
January 27, 2009 10:51 AM

i agree with the assessment of the boomers, in general. you dont build the country by being selfish. it is a tragedy of the commons. i was once on the periphery of the educational system. i noticed that the parents of supposed adult students (university) would call and "bargain" for their "childrens'" grades. it is a mindset now that a degree is being purchased, not an education. and that grades can be negotiated, much like a business deal. parents have gone so far as to do their childrens' classwork. the other end of the spectrum is parents that have absolutely no interest in education themselves, and have no input with their children whatsoever. educators really REALLY have their work cut out for them. technology is grand but i hope the teachers can get enough of an assist from this that they dont have to keep reaching into their own pockets. it would be great if the stimulus package had something in it that could address the root of a lot of things- what goes on at home.

Random
June 13, 2009 11:33 AM

They should allow more people to get financial aid. Anybody should be able to qualify for financial aid that they will have to pay back as long as they are doing well in school.