Education Funding

Feeling Appreciated?

By Anthony Rebora — May 06, 2010 1 min read
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Kind a downer of a Teacher Appreciation Week, huh?

According to a good overview story in the the Christian Science Monitor, teachers unions and lawmakers had to use the occasion to bring attention to looming mass education job cuts and, more hopefully, to newly proposed federal funding to avert layoffs. Not that everyone is necessarily of the opinion that more money is a good idea: “The likelihood that our kids are going to thank us for running up another $23 billion on their tab so that we can avoid making responsible decisions is unlikely,” said the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Hess (who is now blogging on Education Week, by the way).

Meanwhile, in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, Indiana is holding a statehouse ceremony tonight to recognize teachers who have shown extraordinary dedication. Too bad one of the teachers being so recognized just received a layoff notice from her district.

Teachers in New York City may not exactly be feeling the love, either.

Update, 5/7: Apparently not one but two of the teachers honored at the Indiana Statehouse ceremony had received layoff notices. The good news is that the irony of the situation got the attention of state Superintendent Tony Bennett, who, according to the Associated Press, pointed to a “need to reevaluate how schools deal with layoffs.”

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Teaching Now blog.