As Damien Bulwa reports in the San Francisco Chronicle, California came in 16^th among 19 states competing for a second round of funding. Only the top nine entities — eight states and the District of Columbia will receive money.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan held out hope of a possible third round, and told reporters that he plans to request $1.35 billion from next year’s federal budget. This year, officials had $4.35 billion to dole out.

The funding, which comes with enough strings to warm the hearts of the inhabitants of Lilliput, is mainly targeted at better tracking student performance on standardized tests with computerized databases and adopting national curriculum standards.

It’s not clear that the Race to the Top formula is doing what it set out to do. Little if any money actually reaches the classroom. Teachers and administrators are now forced to devote more and more time to dreaming up strategies to goose student performance statistics—because now their jobs and school funding are also on the line.

Whoever decided that our nation’s public school students will learn more if administrators are forced to behave like so many sycophantic game show contestants in a quest for federal money, deserves to be voted off the island.

It’s a common practice in Sacramento, frequently referred to as back-filling, wherein money is shifted around between special purpose funds like musical chairs.

State Democratic leaders, under fire from teacher’s groups, say that schools would get more under their proposal, even if the federal money is merely used to backfill other cuts than what California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger offered in his budget proposal.

The Governor’s spokesman is quoted saying that the backfilling plan could end up being discussed in budget talks.

Federal officials timed the disbursal of the funds well into the new fiscal year to deny states the temptation to reduce their own education outlays knowing that federal funds were on the way. But in Johnny-come-lately California, where the state is now 50 days into the fiscal year without a budget, officials still have the wiggle room to pull the old pigeon drop on the state’s teachers and Washington.

The proposal coincides with a report from the Dept. of Education stating that repayment rates at for-profits are 36 percent compared to 54 percent at public colleges and 56 percent at non-profit, private colleges. This disparity may not seem that big.

But consider that for-profits get a quarter of the $24 billion the government gives in Stafford loans and Pell grants — even though they enroll less than 10 percent of the nation’s undergrads. For-profits apparently have leveraged some of this money not to help students but to, well, make a profit.

It’s an appropriate “student-first” measure to talk about federal education funding in terms of class size, but it doesn’t tell teachers how many of them will be laid off. “It was not immediately clear,” Ross writes, “whether all laid-off high school teachers would automatically be called back to their old slots.”

Also, the state has yet to go through the proper procedures so CPS can spend this money. Last week, Springfield’s State Journal-Register reported that the Illinois General Assembly had to convene a special session to approve the funding. However, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn doesn’t think there’s a need for the General Assembly to get together. It’s not clear if Quinn understands the legislative and bureaucratic procedures needed to obtain federal assistance. However, cash-strapped districts probably won’t let the state dither on grabbing this money.

Arne Duncan

Here’s where the local and state government budget crisis impacts the Obama administration agenda. The education budget crisis in Chicago has hindered the city’s development of its charter schools, reports Sarah Karp at the Chicago News Cooperative. Due to shrinking local tax revenue and a $12 billion state budget deficit, the Chicago Public Schools have made $15 million in cuts for their charter schools. Currently, 40,000 students attend these schools, which are mainly funded by public dollars. The cuts mean that charters will have to rely more on private donors. Already, turnover is high at charters as teachers typically work longer and for less pay than their public school counterparts.

Many of these charter schools were opened by now Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. When Duncan headed CPS, he created a whole education mission (Renaissance 2010) to plant charter schools around the city. Duncan has taken this vision to Washington, providing federal grants to states that encourage charter schools.

But like regular public schools, or for that matter public parks or police departments, charter schools need a reliable stream of funding. Unlike these other institutions, charter schools are new and unproven. So fiscal realities may prevent the innovations Duncan has sought from being successfully implemented.

In the most part-time of part-time jobs, members of the state General Assembly met for a couple of weeks this summer.  They have subsequently left Springfield, and aren’t scheduled to return until after the November election. A spokesman for Mike Madigan, the General Assembly leader since 1983, says he isn’t sure if lawmakers really do need a special session to grab this education money.

A special session would not also include action on the $500 million in additional Medicaid assistance provided by Washington. The General Assembly wrote a budget that anticipated extra federal Medicaid money.

Will Quinn use the federal cash to undo these cuts? Probably not: Illinois faces a $12 billion budget deficit and, while the state has essentially given up on balancing the budget, Quinn has pledged at least $1.3 billion in further cuts. The most fiscally responsible, if not economically stimulating, plan might be to route the $960 million to Illinois creditors. The state has been borrowing to the point where its bond rating has been downgraded by credit rating agencies.

Pat Quinn

In a major breakthrough yesterday, the Senate overcame a filibuster on a bill to provide $26.1 billion in Medicaid and education assistance to state governments.  The House is now expected to return from its August recess to pass the legislation, and President Obama should sign the bill before the 2010-11 school year begins — averting some teacher layoffs. The money will help Illinois, which has an estimated $12 billion budget deficit – the worst budget situation in the nation. But how exactly does the state benefit?

Gov. Pat Quinn is just starting to announce state budget cuts. Doug Finke of the State-Journal Register reports on $895 million in reduced spending outlined by the governor. This includes reduced funding for school transportation and less money for psychiatric hospitals. Now Quinn could use the federal money to reverse course on these cuts. Indeed, most states will apply federal assistance to prevent such program reductions. Illinois, though, is a special case – the state is so far in debt that its wisest course of action might be to start repaying state lenders.

Arguably, Illinois has the worst budget situation in the country — a $13 billion deficit for a state that spends about $26 billion each year. So their portion of Medicaid and education money would neither close the budget gap nor the let state avoid decisions on drastic tax increases or spending cuts. But what the money will do is what the stimulus bill did for Illinois and other states: provide health care for the poor and prevent the layoffs of teachers and other public employees. Illinois needed federal help last year when the budget deficit was about $7 billion. Unfortunately, the state is in even more desperate straits today.

Construction of a dozen wind farms, solar panel complexes and seven different plants that would use a massive array of mirrors to capture solar energy are being jammed up by federal bureaucracy. California officials, including the governor and the state’s senior senator, say the federal Department of Energy is dragging its feet, stingily withholding loan guarantees specifically earmarked for projects that would provide greener power to 3 million households.

[California Governor Arnold] Schwarzenegger, in a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week, said the delays in getting loans approved threatened state plans for a tenfold increase in solar-thermal power output, the biggest jump in almost 30 years.

“Without immediate and urgent attention from the DOE, many of these projects will not be financed and built,” Schwarzenegger wrote.

Schwarzengger has a point. DOE was granted $77 billion to make loan guarantees, but the agency has extended just $535 million as of April. However, curmudgeons at the federal agency don’t deserve the heaping serving of scorn. In the 1970s and early 80s, tax credits for alternative energy production encouraged all sorts of projects that ended up capturing more taxpayer money than energy. Fiduciary responsibility is no vice.