War Spending Bill Won’t Pay for Teachers’ Jobs
Julianne Hing, July 23, 2010

Late Thursday night, the White House successfully intimidated the Senate into passing its war-spending bill without $10 billion for teachers’ jobs and other domestic spending that the House included weeks ago.

Part of the money inside the war-spending bill was meant to go to an emergency fund to stave off over 100,000 imminent teacher and school worker layoffs this coming fall. The resolution, introduced by Rep. David Obey from Wisconsin, would have also set aside an extra $5 million for Pell Grants, which are distributed to undergrads from low-income families. In order to pay for this $10 billion emergency fund, which itself was whittled down from an original $23 billion, Obey suggested shaving off a total of $800 million from some of President Obama’s pilot education reform initiatives like the competitive grants program Race to the Top, a charter school fund and a new program that ties teachers’ pay to their students’ performance. (Read the full article)