For months, pink-slipped teachers across the USA have waited for long-sought federal funding to save their jobs. And Congress finally appropriated $10 billion this month to bring back thousands of teachers, nurses, bus drivers and others. But as the school year begins, many educators are still waiting for the phone to ring. “As far as I know, I’m not going to get my job back,” says Kirsten Jensen, 31, a sixth-grade teacher in Hillsborough, N.J. She was laid off last spring, one of about 3,900 pink-slipped New Jersey educators. “I haven’t heard anything,” she says, “but I’m not very hopeful at this point.” Many school districts might not get the money in time to bring back teachers. Others, fearing even worse economic times over the next two years, are simply planning to put a large share of their money in the bank to ward off further cuts next spring. “It looks to me like we’re not going to get any of this new money for the 2010-2011 school year,” says Joe Gertsema, the Yankton, S.D., schools superintendent, who’s trying to patch a $1.5 million deficit. He tapped cash reserves to keep teachers on the job this fall but says his tiny district “will have to make some tough decisions” if the money doesn’t come through next year. The cash is “a welcome relief at a time when state budgets are being cut,” says Gene Wilhoit of the Council of Chief State School Officers , which represents state superintendents. But he and others say the timing of the aid — states face a Sept. 9 deadline to apply for their share — makes it unclear whether they’ll get money in time to save many jobs this fall. And rehiring thousands of teachers may, in fact, produce its own set of problems, says Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy. “It’s a real dilemma, because if you bring somebody back, you may have to lay them off again next year.” But National Education Association president Dennis Van Roekel says Congress wanted districts to use the money to save jobs now, “not as a savings account for next year.” Districts have spent the past few years trimming payrolls, trying to limit the number of classroom teachers they let go. In Cupertino, Calif., superintendent Phil Quon says a week-long furlough and “massive” local fundraising staved off layoffs, saving 107 teaching jobs. So any cash he sees from Congress will keep people on the payroll next fall. “There are no more ‘edges’ to our budget,” he says. Jensen, the New Jersey sixth-grade teacher, worked nine years before getting pink-slipped in May. “It was pretty devastating,” she says. “I never in a million years expected it to happen.” She has been watching job postings but can’t imagine doing anything but teaching. “I have no idea what else I would do. I’m used to being around children every September.”

ATLANTA (AP) — The U.S. Education Department said Tuesday that nine states and the District of Columbia will get money to reform schools in the second round of the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant competition. Florida, Georgia , Hawaii , Massachusetts , Maryland , New York , North Carolina , Ohio , Rhode Island and Washington, D.C ., will receive grants, department spokesman Justin Hamilton said. The amounts for each state were expected to be announced later. The aim of the historic program is to reward ambitious changes to improve schools and close the achievement gap. The competition instigated a wave of reforms across the country, as states passed new teacher accountability policies and lifted caps on charter schools to boost their chances of winning. Tennessee and Delaware were named winners in the first round of the competition in March, sharing $600 million. The applicants named winners Tuesday will share a remaining $3.4 billion. Another $350 million is coming in a separate competition for states creating new academic assessments. The historic program, part of President Obama’s economic stimulus plan, rewards states for embarking on ambitious reforms to improve struggling schools, close the achievement gap and boost graduation rates. “New York’s schools have made strong strides toward excellence and this grant will accelerate that progress,” said U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer , D-N.Y., who met with Education Secretary Arne Duncan on New York’s proposal. “This is great news for parents, teachers, and taxpayers across the state.” Thirty-five states and the District of Columbia applied for the second round of the competition. The Education Department named 19 applicants finalists in July. More than a dozen states vying for the money changed laws to foster the growth of charter schools, and at least 17 reformed teacher evaluation systems to include student achievement. Dozens also adopted Common Core State Standards, the uniform math and reading benchmarks developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association. “The change unleashed by conditioning federal funding on bold and forward-looking state education policies is indisputable,” the Democrats for Education Reform said in a statement. “Under the president’s leadership, local civil rights, child advocacy, business and education reform groups, in collaboration with those state and local teacher unions ready for change, sprung into action to achieve things that they had been waiting and wanting to do for years.” In a speech announcing the finalists last month, Duncan called the change a “quiet revolution.” Between both rounds of the competition, a total of 46 states and the District of Columbia applied. While the program has been praised for instigating swift reforms, the competition for many states was an uphill battle, with teacher unions hesitant to sign on to reforms directly tying teacher evaluations to student performance on standardized tests, and education leaders concerned winning meant giving up too much local control. A number of states that did not win the competition said they still planned to proceed with the reforms they had proposed, though they acknowledged change would take place at a slower pace. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SUWANEE, Ga. (AP) — By third grade, students should know how to write a complex sentence and add fractions, no matter if they live in Georgia or California. Eighth-graders should understand the Pythagorean theorem. And by high school graduation, all U.S. students should be ready for college or a career. That’s the goal of sweeping new education benchmarks released Wednesday called the Common Core State Standards, a project that aims to replace a hodgepodge of educational goals varying wildly from state to state with a uniform set of expectations for students. It’s the first time states have joined together to establish what students should know by the time they graduate high school. “With these standards, we can provide all of the country’s children with the education they deserve,” said West Virginia schools superintendent Steve Paine, who gathered with other educators and officials from across the country at Peachtree Ridge High School in Suwanee just outside Atlanta to release the final draft of the standards. “Having consistent standards across the states means all of our children are going to be prepared for college and career, regardless of zip code.” States are expected to use the standards to revise their curriculum and tests to make learning more uniform across the country, eliminating inequities in education not only between states but also among districts. The standards also will ensure students transferring to a school district in a different state won’t be far behind their classmates or have to repeat classes because they are more advanced. Under Common Core, third-graders should understand subject-verb agreement, fifth-graders need to know about metaphors and similes and seventh-graders must understand how to calculate surface area. States that sign up are supposed to use the standards as a base on which to build their curricula and testing, but they can make their benchmarks tougher than Common Core. All but two states — Alaska and Texas — signed on to the original concept of Common Core more than a year ago. Critics worry that the standards will basically nationalize public schools rather than letting states decide what is best for their students. Texas’ commissioner of education, Robert Scott, has said that the state didn’t sign on to Common Core because it wants to preserve its “sovereign authority to determine what is appropriate for Texas children to learn in its public schools.” So far, the standards have been adopted by Kentucky, Hawaii, Maryland, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Another 40 states and Washington, D.C., have agreed to adopt the standards in coming months, said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers , which joined with the National Governors Association in leading the Common Core project. “We don’t think it’s acceptable that because a student lives down in Atlanta and not up here, they should have different outcomes,” said Wilhoit before Wednesday’s event in the northern Atlanta suburbs. The federal government was not involved but has encouraged the project, including adoption of the standards as part of the scoring in the U.S. Department of Education ‘s “Race to the Top” grant competition. President Barack Obama has said he wants to make money from Title I — the federal government’s biggest school aid program — contingent on adoption of college- and career-ready reading and math standards. “As the nation seeks to maintain our international competitiveness, ensure all students regardless of background have access to a high quality education and prepare all students for college, work and citizenship, these standards are an important foundation for our collective work,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday in a prepared statement. Common Core was structured over a year of meetings with teachers, parents, school administrators, civil rights leaders, education policymakers, business leaders and others from across the country. The group produced multiple drafts and collected comments from more than 10,000 people online. “The world is small now, and we’re not just competing with students in our county or across the state. We are competing with the world,” said Robert Kosicki, who graduated from a Georgia high school this year after transferring from Connecticut and having to repeat classes because the curriculum was so different. “This is a move away from the time when a student can be punished for the location of his home or the depth of his father’s pockets.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.