Stimulating Education in the Stimulus Package

Wow! …Education and the Stimulus Package --- Lots and lots of speculation early last week about the size and shape of the economic stimulus package and then on Thursday the House Dems unveiled a $825 billion package containing $275 billion tax cuts, and $550 billion in targeted priority investments with “unprecedented accountability measures”. A key provision in the proposal is $79 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund which includes funds evenly split between Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010 (money for school years 2009-10 and 2010-11) for the following:

$13 Billion for IDEA special education
$13 billion for Title I. of which $1.2 billion is for the School Improvement grant program
$1 billion for education technology state grants
$25 million for charter school facilities
$200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund
$250 million for statewide longitudinal data systems
$15 billion is set aside for “State Incentive Grants” for FY 2010 for states that have made significant progress in meeting the three above objectives.
$325 million for an Innovation Fund for academic achievement awards for States, local educational agencies, or schools to “… to work in partnership with the private sector and the philanthropic community; and to identify and document best practices that can be shared, and taken to scale based on demonstrated success…”
Also for the National Science Foundation $60 million for Noyce Teacher Scholarship program $40 million for Math Science Partnership.