President Barack Obama has signed a long-stalled measure aimed at keeping more than 160,000 teachers on the job.

The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday gave final approval to the bill, which provides $10 billion in aid to states and school districts to avert educator layoffs and hire new staff members.

The measure also provides $16 billion in Medicaid funding to states. That has an indirect benefit for schools, because states would likely have had to make additional cuts—including to education—if the money for Medicaid had not been forthcoming.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told reporters yesterday that he aims to implement a “streamlined” application process for states and districts to snag their shares of the education jobs fund.

Mr. Duncan said he hoped to get the money out to districts and states “in a matter of weeks.”

Still, he said, the money will not necessarily completely alleviate state and district financial woes.

“There’s still unmet need out there,” Mr. Duncan acknowledged. For “the vast majority of districts around this country, this is a major step in the right direction, ... [but] many folks will still have to make tough decisions.”

During debate over the bill, GOP lawmakers had argued, however, that the measure would simply prop up school districts who they said have gone on a hiring spree in recent years.

Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, noted that Congress had already approved $100 billion last year for education programs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, with the intention of providing temporary relief to states.

“It was a one-time investment, we were told—they would not be back for more,” he said in the floor debate on the new legislation. “Yet here we stand. They are back for more.” Rep. Kline said that the bill would do nothing to overhaul teacher-layoff practices, which critics say tend to prize seniority over other factors, such as teacher effectiveness. Some education organizations, including the Education Trust, in Washington, which advocates for poor and minority children, had encouraged Congress to include language in the bill requiring districts to abandon such practices as a condition for receiving the funds.

Read the full article at Education Week...

Teach for America, the nonprofit group that recruits elite college students to teach in public schools, and the KIPP Foundation, which runs a nationwide network of charter schools, were big winners in a $650 million federal grant competition known as Investing in Innovation, the Department of Education said Wednesday.

Each group won $50 million. Two others won large awards for proposals the department said were backed by significant evidence of success with students.

The Success for All Foundation, a Baltimore group that helps to turn around struggling elementary schools, won $49 million. And Ohio State University, partnered with several other universities, was awarded $46 million to train some 3,750 teachers in the Reading Recovery approach, which focuses on struggling first-grade students.

The department awarded the remaining $455 million in smaller amounts to 45 other nonprofit groups and school districts. About 1,700 groups applied for grants, the department said.

Congress financed the innovation grant competition in last year’s economic stimulus, along with the larger, better-known, $4.2 billion competition known as Race to the Top, in which states have put forward proposals for shaking up their school systems.

The innovation competition, in contrast, was open to nonprofit organizations and local school districts.

Read the full article at The New York Times...