DES MOINES, Wash. — U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged Congress on Friday to act soon to increase education funding because cash-strapped states can’t wait until the fall to determine if they must lay off thousands of teachers.

Duncan made his remarks at a forum on innovation in education at Aviation High School in Des Moines, a small college prep school that focuses on science, technology and mathematics.

At the forum, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said she hopes fellow lawmakers spent their Fourth of July break hearing from parents and teachers, like she did. Murray said if they got the message about how urgent the school budget crisis is, they will return to Washington, D.C., with the drive to find more money for schools.

A proposal to send billions more to the states has hit a number of roadblocks.

The U.S. House has proposed cutting money from Race to the Top and other Duncan initiatives in order to send $10 billion to the states to keep 140,000 teachers in the classroom, and about $5 billion to shore up the Pell Grant program, which helps low-income students pay for college.

Murray and Duncan both said many different proposals to pay for the emergency dollars are on the table.

“He and I have to go back to Washington and make this work,” the senator said.

Several dozen teachers and others held signs and chanted outside the school to protest Race to the Top and demand changes in the upcoming overhaul of the No Child Left Behind act. Some people inside the auditorium also expressed skepticism about education reform.

(click link to continue reading)

How disappointing. Rigid “last hired, first fired” rules are a disaster for schoolchildren. They mean that across the country, teachers of the year will be pink-slipped simply because they are young. Yep—some of our very best teachers will be driven out of the profession. Meanwhile, older, incompetent teachers will be kept on. That’s unconscionable. We now know that having a bad teacher two or three years in a row in the early grades all but dooms disadvantaged children.

With a little imagination, there’s a grand compromise available: money to prevent layoffs in exchange for a requirement that seniority no longer be the only factor in determining layoffs (it could continue to be one of four or five factors). But according to an administration source, this was apparently considered and rejected by the president without any serious effort to determine if it could win enough Republican votes in the Senate. (White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel disputes this account.) It would take action to change collective bargaining agreements in some state legislatures, but this was true of portions of Race to the Top and proved to be a surmountable barrier.

The brutal truth is that teachers’ unions don’t care much about protecting young, great teachers (often union members, but less influential ones) who will get laid off soon. Instead, the unions and their lackeys in Congress and state legislatures will go down fighting for older teachers, even if they’re lemons of the year.

By the way, this is a perversion of the American labor movement. Who went to the union barricades in the mid-20th century chanting “Last hired! First fired!”? No one. Seniority systems might make some sense on assembly lines, but have no place in education.

I have mixed feelings about this article.  While I think the last hired, first fired option is not good … the article almost seems to imply that older teachers are not talented.  Many are incredibly amazing, and I’ve learned a lot from them.  Also, I am concerned about the cuts to education funding, but agree with the idea to cut funding for charter schools and am not really sure about how I feel about the “Race to the Top” program which provides funds to states that have the most accountability in their state education programs.   The whole idea of holding teachers “accountable” baffles me.  Not that I think we shouldn’t be expected to do the best job possible, I just know few good teachers who don’t want to be the best teacher they can be and don’t strive to as much as they can for their students.  Most of us went into this profession because of our love for children, desire to share knowledge, desire to change lives or be a role model, and most of all our desire to help others.  Those that don’t have that view, tend to be the “incompetent” teachers regardless of age, and if we kept teachers based on their ability to teach regardless of how long they had been teaching there this would not be a problem.    At the same time, how good can I teacher be with the stress of constantly worrying about their job security (I worked at a no contract school before, and with the economy being bad I was constantly worried about having a job)?

I’m rambling, but I’m interested in hearing other people’s opinions on this article. 

Democratic lawmakers have tucked $10 billion in funding for education jobs into a defense supplemental spending bill currently in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to legislative language released on Wednesday.

The $10 billion fund is a smaller version of the $23 billion allotment that failed in the Senate in May, when fiscal conservatives raised concerns about the federal deficit.

The fund will again face opposition from Republicans who are reluctant to appropriate money to schools for fear of adding to the country’s deep debt.

States would allocate the money to elementary and secondary schools under existing formulas in order to save or create education jobs. They could not use the money for administration, building up reserves or retiring debt.

Yes.  Having teachers, creating jobs, and educating our children will NOT help the economy.  It will do no good.