The educational stimulus funds of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) come through a dizzying array of funding streams and time schedules that strive to balance immediate relief with forward-looking investment.
The overall scheme includes allotments for state stabilization, Title I grants for school improvement in poor areas, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act funds, vocational rehabilitation state grants, independent living services, homeless assistance, and construction funds. The single largest program, the state stabilization fund, itself breaks down into multiple delivery methods. Roughly $40 billion of the one-time stabilization appropriation will funnel through states’ existing funding formulae to help districts replenish their budgets, minimize cuts, and avoid layoffs. Another component of the stabilization fund will support education through school modernization and such other government services as public safety. The remainder of the stabilization fund will provide for competitive grants to award innovative and promising programs.
The two trends evident in the stabilization fund-affording swift assistance while also prioritizing strategic investments-inhere in the ARRA as a whole. Most basically, according to the ARRA's first guiding principle, the stimulus aims to "spend funds quickly to save and create jobs." The other three ARRA guiding principles, however, move beyond the short-term to focus on lasting reforms in school management and student achievement.
The Department of Education has outlined four areas of core assurances that states must agree to advance in exchange for accepting stimulus funds:
College-and-career-ready standards and high quality, valid, and reliable assessments for all students, including ELLs and students with disabilities
Teacher effectiveness and equitable distribution of effective teachers
Intensive support and effective interventions for lowest-performing schools
Pre-K to higher education data systems that meet the principles in the America COMPETES Act
To make each of these areas more tangible, data metrics should be used to document progress. The Department of Education has offered some suggestions. College-and-career-ready standards, for example, should take into account math and reading NAEP scores, tests of ELLs and students with disabilities, and college attendance and completion rates. The groupings of teachers by performance level, and the spread in the percentage of highly qualified teachers between rich and poor schools, should signal teacher effectiveness. Intensive support for low-performing schools should encompass the number of schools in "restructuring status" and their progress in student achievement. Finally, the use of data systems refers to transparent measures of the other three core assurances.
The Department of Education's recommended uses of stimulus funds are similarly classified to align with the core assurances. Ways to strengthen college-and-career-ready standards could include enhanced early learning, improved technology, more specialized and accelerated learning tracks, and school modernization. Strides in teacher effectiveness could come through more sophisticated teacher evaluation systems, coaching and mentoring programs, and special training and certification for ELL and special education teachers. To intervene effectively in low-performing schools, districts could consider additional programs and learning time, or, if more drastic action proved necessary, they could shut a school down and re-launch it with new staff. Examples of rigorous data systems are those that update teachers on student progress and are utilized in district decision-making.
Districts should not feel compelled to spend their stimulus funds on precisely the examples articulated by the Department of Education. Rather, the suggested uses are meant to underscore the general nature of how districts should invest their ARRA allotments. The recommended uses make it clear that the Department of Education seeks to emphasize strategic priorities instead of regular operational steps.
To assess whether their ideas for spending stimulus dollars align with the principles and assurances of the ARRA, districts should judge their ideas against the ARRA's usage guidance. According to the Department of Education, the use of ARRA funds should foster achievement for students, increase the long-term capacity of teachers and school districts, drive reform toward the district, state, and ARRA goals, stimulate effectiveness and efficiency, avoid a "funding cliff," and include measures of evaluation.
Proposed expenditures that meet these criteria will not only comply with the desires of the federal government, but also maximize one-time funds for long-term strategic impact.
