Tag Archive for 'economic stimulus'

GOP: Stimulus Money Hard To Take Back Later

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 26, 2009 in Education News. 1 Comment

Republican lawmakers are pushing back on the economic stimulus package and its billions in education spending.  The basic question is what happens when the economy improves and schools have grown used to the record-breaking federal outlay?

School spending accounts for about one-sixth of the $825 billion economic recovery package….The plan would spend about $20 billion quickly to build and fix up classrooms, from kindergarten through college, in an effort to spur job creation and growth. States would receive $39 billion to stave off cuts in schools.  But it would also pump an extra $26 billion into two long-term programs, No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The bill includes a $15 billion bonus fund to encourage reforms related to teaching and student tests.

“It’ll never go away,” Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn tells the AP.  “You’re talking about a permanent increase at a time when we are in the worst financial shape we’ve ever been in.”

A-Rus at This Week in Education has more.

Prez Dispenser

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 12, 2009 in Opinion. 1 Comment

“J.F.K. took us to the moon. Let B.H.O. take America back to school,” says New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.  His column “Tax Cuts for Teachers” is a bit of a sausage–a melange of gee-whiz ideas on how to stimulate the economy by getting “as much money injected as quickly as possible” into the economy while favoring investments in knowledge over infrastructure. ”Our stimulus needs to be both big and smart, both financially and educationally stimulating,” Friedman argues.  In a single giddy paragraph, he encourages Obama to reach into the trough with both hands, throwing dollars at education.

One of the smartest stimulus moves we could make would be to eliminate federal income taxes on all public schoolteachers so more talented people would choose these careers. I’d also double the salaries of all highly qualified math and science teachers, staple green cards to the diplomas of foreign students who graduate from any U.S. university in math or science — instead of subsidizing their educations and then sending them home — and offer full scholarships to needy students who want to go to a public university or community college for the next four years.

A bridge is just a bridge, Friedman notes. Once it’s up, it stops stimulating. While investing in education could get us “the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. They create good jobs for years.”

Where’s the Bailout for Schools?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on November 25, 2008 in Education News. 3 Comments

You knew it was just a matter of time before someone asked, “Where’s the bailout for public schools?”  With Wall Street and the banks on the receiving end of hundreds of billions of federal largesse, and the Big Three automakers next in line, Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is calling on the federal government to consider a bailout of the nation’s public schools.

”The question in my mind is this: At a time when we’re continuing the bailout of key industries, at what point do we have a bailout of public education?” asks Carvalho, whose district has already trimmed about $300 million from its budget, and could face an additional $65 million in cuts, according to the Miami Herald.  The Miami-Dade school system is the nation’s fourth largest.

”The most commonly heard solution out of Washington these days is a bailout where the federal government intervenes to safeguard key industries and in the process, the quality of American life,” Carvalho said. “If that’s the rationale, than I cannot think of a more strategic investment than safeguarding the quality of public education.”

Meanwhile, over at Eduwonk, Andy Rotherham, who is nothing if not plugged in to the political machinery, reports “hearing some rumblings that a big pre-K program would make a great stimulus package education component.”  But Rotherham thinks school construction makes more sense.  “There is a real need for both traditional public schools and public charter schools and it’s a sensible way to create and maintain jobs,” he writes.