Over the last few weeks we have learned more about the portions of the economic stimulus package passed by Congress and how it will effect education in the United States. As near as I can tell, there is $53 Billion dollars allocated in the recovery act to address Education and Training. Of that amount, state departments of education expect somewhere near $5B dollars to be allocated to them in this coming year, perhaps as late as October of 2009. There is a second, separate pot of money in the amount of $650 million, that has been allocated to an existing program called Ed-Tech. That funding amount is available in 2009, but is less than the amount previously available to schools under that program in years past. However, it is worth noting that this money is designed to be allocated to school technology programs and not to address more general school budget concerns.
Many states seem to be looking at their share of the $5B to address shortfalls in tax revenue, that is, to maintain the status quo in their state. No doubt this is welcome news to many states, California included. Some states are in less dire economic circumstances than California and their department of ed leaders are looking at how best to spend this new money. For us at Connected, it will be very interesting to see how those states choose to spend the money. Will it be applied to existing programs, or, will it be spent to move schools a bit closer to the rest of society’s use of the Internet.
Slightly off topic, but it is worth saying that in the last couple of months, feedback from parents we have spoken to about our product has illuminated an opinion shared by most that school hours represent time that their children are walled off from the world for the most part. Cell phones are to be turned off or silenced; many Internet sites are blocked, etc. Many parents are concerned that schools are making it harder for children to be prepared to deal with the real world. This will be the topic of another post to come.
Back to the Recovery act…
One of the things I like about the new administration in Washington is its commitment to transparency. To that end, the site Recovery.org is worth visiting. The content is sparse at the time of this posting, but it is definitely worth paying attention to.
Let me get back to the Ed-Tech program and the $650 million dollars. Of that $650 million, $308 million will be passed down to LEA (Local Education Agencies, or school districts) for them to decide what to do with it. Another $308 million will be administered by the state for use by the LEAs. That is, districts will apply to their state department of education for grants to use that money. An additional $37.5 million will be available to the state departments of ed for state-wide programs. We hope that school districts will look at our solution – Connected.info and consider it as something they could apply for grant money to deploy in their district.
At a high level, the infusion of money into the educational system in the United States is a good thing. I only hope that the system chooses to apply that money in ways that create better learning opportunities for our students.
