The News

wonkroom.thinkprogress.org — Today, the Senate will be taking a procedural vote on a bill providing $26 billion in aid to state and local governments, $10 billion of which is dedicated to preventing teacher layoffs. This particular batch of funding has been included in, and then cut from, multiple bills, as each time conservatives have objected. Originally, $23 billion was to go toward saving teaching jobs, but that has been whittled down over the past few months.

Read Full Article »

thehill.com — The Senate tabled a jobs measure Monday because Democrats underestimated the package’s cost. Democrats had scheduled a vote to end debate on their proposal to send $10 billion in funding to states and local governments to prevent public teacher layoffs. The package contains another $16.1 billion to help states with Medicaid obligations.

Read Full Article »

politico.com — The Senate sent back to the House Thursday night a stripped-down $59 billion war funding bill, after striking all of the added education assistance which Democrats had wanted to avert threatened teacher layoffs in the fall.

With the August recess looming, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) faces growing pressure from the White House and Pentagon to accept the Senate verdict and not prolong the fight any further. A final decision has yet to be made, but the Senate 51-46 roll call was devastating, showing the House that less than half the senators were on its side.

Read Full Article »

nytimes.com — Shanghai and Beijing are becoming new lands of opportunity for recent American college graduates who face unemployment nearing double digits at home. Even those with limited or no knowledge of Chinese are heeding the call. They are lured by China’s surging economy, the lower cost of living and a chance to bypass some of the dues-paying that is common to first jobs in the United States. And the Chinese economy is more hospitable for both entrepreneurs and job seekers, with a gross domestic product that rose 7.9 percent in the most recent quarter compared with the period a year earlier. Unemployment in urban areas is 4.3 percent, according to government data.

Read Full Article »

usatoday.com — States that want a piece of the Obama administration's $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund for schools must hew to internationally benchmarked academic standards and let schools pay teachers and principals more if they work in hard-to-staff schools — or if student scores improve on basic skills tests. In detailed draft guidelines being released today in Washington, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan lay out their most forceful proposals on public schools. States won't be eligible for the money unless they get rid of legal barriers that prohibit tying teacher pay to test scores — a bid aimed directly at California. Duncan says the state has erected a legal "firewall" that keeps schools from paying educators more for improved performance.

Read Full Article »

washingtonpost.com — A bill that cleared a House committee would largely remove private lenders from the federal student loan industry, generating an estimated $87 billion savings over 10 years to fund more government grants and loans. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 would eliminate an entire category of student loans issued by private lenders and subsidized by the federal government, vastly expanding direct lending by the government starting next July. Democrats would use the savings to fund a $40 billion increase in federal Pell Grant scholarships over 10 years, $10 billion in community college upgrades and $8 billion in pre-kindergarten changes, among other uses.

Read Full Article »