The Wonk Room

Duncan: States That Haven’t Applied For Education Stimulus Funds Need To ‘Step Up To The Plate’

Yesterday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan appeared at a CAP event to discuss the Obama administration’s efforts to reform America’s education system. But early on in his talk, Duncan noted a pretty startling statistic: so far, only 13 states have received their education funding from the stimulus bill passed in February:

What’s been a little interesting to me is that states have been slow to apply for the money. We’ve had about 13 states come in to get their share of the recovery funds, put out almost $13 billion to date…So we have 30 states that haven’t even applied for resources yet, and we’re committed to turning these around as fast as we can. We think as we go into the summer and folks are planning for next school year, that states and districts and school systems need a sense of stability. We don’t want to be laying off tens of thousands of teachers and taking a step backwards. It’s really critical to me that states step up to the plate if they haven’t applied.

Watch it:

The deadline for applying for the funding is July 1, and 28 states (and the District) have yet to get their applications in. The New Republic’s Seward Darby took a look at who is dragging their feet:

By my count, of the states that have applied, eleven have Republican governors, while nine have Democrats in charge. And, of those that haven’t applied, eleven have Republican executives, while 19 have Democratic ones. We all know about those Republican governors with confused feelings about the stimulus money–that’s you, Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin–but what’s stalling the other hold-outs, particularly the Democratic ones?

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, said that “the likely explanation for a slow stream of applications to the Education Department is that state agencies must wait for clearance from their legislatures, which are charged with crafting state budgets.” If this is the case, these state legislatures need to sort through their bureaucracy and get their homework in, so that their states don’t become a drag on the economy.