At least two legislators on The Hill are keeping their wits about them during the current Congressional spending spree.  Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have been working to trim the fat from their colleagues’ massive economic stimulus proposal.  The recommended DOE cuts alone would save taxpayers almost $15 billion (more than 10% of the current proposal) - and this doesn’t even take into account the State Stabilization Fund, which also includes money for education:

Elimination of Disability Research - $610,000,000
Reduction of IDEA - $6,750,000,000
Reduction of Title I Funding - $6,500,000,000
Reduction of Head Start - $1,050,000,000
Reduction of Teacher Quality Partnership Grants - $50,000,000
TOTAL - $14,960,000,000

At least it’s a start.

On the other hand, folks are already salivating over the myriad ways to get their hands on some of the stimulus cashola.  Lining up at the trough before it is filled seems to be a sport of sorts, and Thompson Publishing is fanning the flames of desire with School Grants 2009, their guide to the education money and how to get it.  The amazing thing is that a subscription to School Grants 2009 even pays for itself.  Thomson reminds prospective clients that:

“Don’t forget, your federal grant money can be used to pay for this product.”

Priceless.

More of the Same at Twice the Price

The National Education Association has prepared a vital tool for anyone interested in assessing the potential impact of the economic stimulus bill on education in the U.S. As major media figures have pointed out in the last several days, the stimulus bill is nothing more than additional funding for the education programs and structures that already exist, regardless of efficacy. And the NEA’s drawn up the charts to prove it. (Notice that reform efforts currently implemented at national and state levels, like charter schools and No Child Left Behind, are completely bypassed.)

Both Senate and House versions nearly double funding of all major programs, such as Title 1 – funding which flows to school districts, where it subsidizes existing staffs and programs. While this may help state and local administrators avoid laying off teachers, it is not tied to student achievement, ensuring that all monies spent simply prop up schools that exist, rather than boosting schools that succeed (NCLB links funding to results, but this pay out comes before the next meaningful achievement assessment, and thus is not tied to accountability). The same is true for the multi-billion dollar school modernization program, for special education and for myriad other program increases.

Also not lost on the status quo supporters of this bill is the fact that there are administrative set-asides at the federal, state and local level. What’s 1 percent of $100 billion? That’s right — government will grow by $1 billion, at the minimum, thanks to this effort. That doesn’t even take into account higher education stimulus funds, another $40 billion or so of which is included in this bill.

There’s also LOTS of money for researchers – the National Science Foundation gets several million more, as does the Institute for Education Sciences. Some discretionary funds (we call it play money) – about $340 million – are also in place for the Secretary to spend as he sees fit on “innovative” programs. But shouldn’t innovative or successful new programs simply draw funds equitably and directly from all federal appropriations (rather than being shunted through the federal-state-local system, with a little – or a lot - being siphoned off at each bureaucratic stop)? Why must “innovation” be separately accounted for in a slush fund, when such reforms are mainly responsible for all the achievement gains of the last decade? And as a result of a decade of reforms, the nation already knows how to succeed in educating children – we simply lack the political resolve to make the hard choices. So why more research in this time of economic crisis? Oh, that’s right. It’s about the jobs of adults, not the education of children.

Consideration of whether or not our current education programs work is missing from the creation of this bill altogether – when it should be the central concern. For years Washington’s representatives fought accountability. NCLB began to shed light in that dark corner. Subsequently ignoring the vetting of programs’ effectiveness before shelling out hard-earned taxpayer dollars is not the way to bring about change and fix failing schools. Which, not incidentally, is the long-haul, big-picture solution to getting – and keeping - our economy back on track for good.

Check out the NEA analysis yourself. We’re glad to finally make use of the taxpayer dollars we give them through mandatory dues payments to see where it’s all going – if the status quo has its way.

(In light of the impending stimulus package making the rounds on Capitol Hill, the following is a riff on remarks made by President Barack Obama following a meeting with his education economic team. The original can be read in its entirety on the official White House blog.)

One point I want to make is that all of us are going to have responsibilities to get this economy education moving again. And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers Congress had given themselves the education system $20 billion $100 billion worth of bonuses in new spending — the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 effectively doubling federal funding of education — at a time when most of these institutions were are teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don’t provide help that where they don’t have any other choices for educating their children, the entire system could come down on top of our heads if the next generation - indeed, this generation - can’t compete in a global economy — that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful.

And part of what we’re going to need is for folks on Wall Street in the education BLOB who are asking for help to show some restraint accountability and show some discipline transparency and show some sense of responsibility. The American people understand that we’ve got a big hole that we’ve got to dig ourselves out of — but they don’t like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole even as they’re being asked to fill it up.

And so we’re going to be having conversations as this process moves forward directly with these folks on Wall Street the BLOB to underscore that they have to start acting in a more responsible accountable and transparent fashion if we are to together get this economy rolling again. There will be time for them to make profits an opportunity for those with rigorous programs to put them in play in the classroom, as is already seen in charter schools across the country, and there will be time for them to get bonuses quality teachers to excel and be compensated on their merits rather than their seniority — now is not that time. And that’s a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner Duncan to send to them — and Secretary Geithner Duncan already had to pull back one institution that had gone forward with a multimillion dollar jet plane purchase tenure protection contract at the same time as they’re receiving TARP ARRA money. We shouldn’t have to do that because they should know better. And we will continue to send that message loud and clear.

Having said that, I am confident that with the recovery package moving through the House and through the Senate, with the excellent work that’s already been done by Secretary Geithner in consultation with Larry Summers and Paul Volcker and other individuals education reformers in the trenches, that we are going to be able to set up a regulatory framework that allows accountability, transparency and choice to rights the ship and that gets us moving again. And I know the American people are eager to get moving again — they want to work be able to choose the best education for their children, be it in a conventional, charter or private school. They are serious about their responsibilities; I am, too, in this White House and I hope that the folks on Wall Street in the BLOB are going to be thinking in the same way.

(brought to you as a public service by M.O.M.S. - Mothers Opposed to Misappropriated Stimulus)

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning, TIME’s Joe Klein discussed the proposed stimulus package - with an early focus on the education portion:

KLEIN …Things I’d love to see in this: I think you have over a hundred billion dollars in education, but no quid pro quo from the teachers unions. If you’re going to give a hundred billion in education, at least we should get one extra month of teaching a year. Or, those funds should only be available to districts that eliminate teacher tenure.

Joe Scarborough jumped in with this sarcastic aside:

SCARBOROUGH …With a provision in there, as you suggest Joe, that says absolutely none of this one hundred billion dollars shall be spent to allow poor children to go to the same school that rich Senators send their kids to.

(The education chatter begins @ 1:20 in the video below.)

MEMO

TO: Readers
FROM: Ed M. Onitor
DATE: January 28, 2009
RE: Did you think it was all about the kids?

I wanted to flag for you Sam Dillon’s piece on the education portion of the federal stimulus package from today’s New York Times.

Some lines worth highlighting:

“The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending…”

“Critics and supporters alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the federal government’s role in education…”

“Obama administration officials, teachers unions and associations representing school boards, colleges and other institutions in American education said the aid would bring crucial financial relief to the nation’s 15,000 school districts and to thousands of campuses otherwise threatened with severe cutbacks.”

“This is going to avert literally hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday.”

“This really marks a new era in federal spending…”

And perhaps the most on-target statement comes from AEI’s Rick Hess (it almost made me spill my coffee):

“It’s like an alcoholic at the end of the night when the bars close, and the solution is to open the bar for another hour…”

Instead of throwing money at our crisis, why don’t we throw some innovation at our failing education system?

Got Mandate?