Stimulus Package Saved Teacher Jobs, Scholars Say
The Center on Reinventing Public Education has an important new analysis out on jobs data and the stimulus.
The bottom line: Although K-12 employment dropped by about 1.4 percent from 2009 to 2010, the federal economic-stimulus law paid for about 342,000 jobs over that time period, or 5.5 percent of total K-12 employment. In other words, it appears that the legislation did, in fact, save a significant number of teachers' jobs.
In all, the paper says, about 87,000 jobs were lost last year, in what is only the second decline ever in K-12 overall since 1993. But that's a lot fewer than the 600,000 that were projected.
Researchers Marguerite Roza, Chris Lozier, and Cristina Sepe collected employment data for the 21 states where it was available in 2010 to arrive at their estimate of a 1.4 percent decline in the workforce. Then they used a fiscal
