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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Debt Deal Could Cut K-12 Spending, Poison No Child Left Behind Process

Debt Deal Could Cut K-12 Spending, Poison No Child Left Behind Process

Debt Deal Could Cut K-12 Spending, Poison No Child Left Behind Process

Students
Joy Resmovits

Public schools around the country averted an immediate spending crisis when Congress voted Tuesday afternoon to pass an 11th-hour deal to raise the debt ceiling and prevent the government from defaulting on its loans.

A default could have increased school systems' capital, borrowing and construction costs, forcing spending cuts in areas closely related to student learning. Schools have already suffered massive cutsin recent years, and lost about 200,000 public education employees, due to the recession and the drying up of stimulus funds.

The debt deal's changes to the Pell Grant program, which helps disadvantaged students pay for college, have been highly publicized, but details of what the debt deal will mean for k-12 education funding