Education Week reports that educators and their advocates are stunned and delighted by the sheer magnitude of spending proposed by Democrats to “stimulate” their schools:
The more than $100 billion in federal spending for education in the stimulus bill would be nearly double the entire $59.2 billion discretionary budget for the U.S. Department of Education in fiscal 2008. …
?We really have turned a corner here. This is a new era for education funding,? assuming the plan is enacted, said Edward R. Kealy, the executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, an advocacy coalition in Washington.
Mr. Kealy, who has been lobbying for increased federal education spending for more than two decades, said he had never seen dollar amounts for schools like those in the proposed House stimulus plan.
?This makes a very strong statement that providing adequate funding for education and modernizing schools is a key part of the solution to this economic crisis,? he said. ?We hope this means that we can sustain that in future years. I know that?s going to be a challenge.?
Seems to me that investing in elementary schools is more likely to pay dividends ten years from now, than boost a sagging economy in 2009. However, given that we’ll still be paying off the stimulus-induced deficit then, maybe there’s a weird internal logic to it. Or maybe a signal that, like the first great Keynesian experiment, this slump is expected to last a long, long time.
