Well, the stimulus seems to have been passed, in part, on the backs of children. TPM got their hands on a draft of the conference agreement, and here are some of the losses in education:

  • The $500,000,000 new work study program for college students has been cut to $200,000,000.
  • Funds for school technology cut from $1 billion to $650,000,000.
  • The entire $14 billion fund for K-12 school construction has disappeared, though states can apply for construction dollars from a separate “stabilization fund.”
  • $24,000,000 for innovation and improvement in the charter school sector is totally gone.

In better news, the House won out on teacher quality, preserving $100,000,000 for teacher residency programs bringing new teachers into high-need schools. And despite the cuts, this spending still represents the largest single investment ever into the Department of Education — an investment that is greater than the current department’s discretionary budget.

—Dana Goldstein

Dana Goldstein, a former associate editor and writer at the Prospect, comes from a family of public-school educators. She received the Spencer Fellowship in Education Journalism, a Schwarz Fellowship at the New America Foundation, and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellowship at the Nation Institute. Her journalism is regularly featured in Slate, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications, and she is a staff writer at the Marshall Project.