Governor Edward G. Rendell today said the commonwealth has applied for $108 million in federal funds to expand high-speed Internet service to people, institutions and communities throughout Pennsylvania -- an investment that will boost the state's economic development and education systems for years to come.

North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue today announced that MCNC has applied to receive $28.1 million in broadband recovery funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to support fiber acquisition for the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN) in North Carolina.

The digital divide is large and shows no signs of decreasing. It compounds the racial disparities found in education and household earnings and impacts heavily on standard of living. The broadband initiatives contained in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) could help to bridge that gap by making the internet more accessible to all Americans.

The FCC wants to push broadband Internet access further into the rural reaches of the U.S., but to do that it'll have to define what level of data speed should be given the term "broadband." Top ISPs have provided their suggestions; most involve setting a fairly low bar for what may officially be called "broadband" speed.

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As school leaders prepare to spend billions of dollars in federal stimulus money, the American Library Association (ALA) is lobbying to have some of those dollars used to keep school libraries up to date during hard economic times.

The Secondary School Innovation Fund Act would provide critical resources for innovative secondary school redesign to dramatically raise high school graduation rates and stem the flow of high school dropouts.

The top education official in the Obama administration says that federal stimulus dollars for school districts are meant to be spent over two years, which aligns with the position of L.A. school officials in their ongoing political war with employee unions over looming layoffs. The comment by Education Secretary Arne Duncan is significant because unions have been campaigning for district officials to spend as much of the stimulus money as needed to save jobs now. District officials have countered that employees must agree to conditional salary concessions if all jobs are to be saved. District officials have argued that federal stimulus money should be split over two years, in large measure because both years are likely to prove economically dire.

Concrete ideas from the Center for American Progress for strategic spending in three key areas-taking stock of current practices, focusing on support for quality instruction, and making transitional investments-in order to give some guidance to those districts seeking to balance the act's short-term focus on preserving jobs with its long-term goals of promoting student achievement.

This is a fabulous Stimulus Package Reporting idea - something that I've been thinking about too. It could work for every sector. Social media tools could play a huge role in organizing projects, monitoring progress and keeping everything transparent. I love all the concepts in this web site. Excellent work! Training would be needed however, because project leads are not necessarily the kind of people who normally use these tools.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is offering federal cash incentives to achieve one of his top priorities: developing national standards for reading and math to replace a current hodgepodge of benchmarks in the states. Duncan said June 14 that the efforts of 46 states to develop common, internationally measured standards for student achievement would be bolstered by up to $350 million in federal funds to help them develop tests to assess those standards.

Well before the idea of using data to manage schools gained prominence on the national stage, Oklahoma's Western Heights school district had made the ideal of real-time, data-driven decisionmaking a reality. Back in 2001, Superintendent Joe Kitchens was already being spotlighted for his focus on creating a longitudinal-data system that would give teachers in the 3,400-student district the ability to make quick decisions to improve student learning, while reducing the time spent compiling reports.

Robert Linquanti, Director for English Learner Evaluation and Accountability Support in WestEd's Comprehensive School Assistance Program, moderated a webinar panel on May 26th comprising select members of the English Language Learner (ELL) Working Group. This Working Group recently issued recommendations for using ARRA funds wisely to meet the needs of our nation's English learners.

Two key Democrats in Congress have expressed skepticism about the Obama administration's proposal to shift $1 billion out of Title I grants for districts into the separate Title I school improvement program in the fiscal 2010 federal budget. In its fiscal 2010 budget proposal, the administration justified the change by pointing to a $10 billion increase that the Title I grant program for districts received in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus measure that passed in February and that includes up to $100 billion for education,

"So The Stimulus Passed…Now What?" is a webinar led by ISTE CEO Don Knezek and Director of Government Affairs Hillary Goldamann and features guests David Byer of Apple and the Chair of ISTE's Public Policy and Advocacy Committee, Deborah Rigsby of the National School Boards Association, and Davis Brock of Elmore County Public Schools in Alabama. In this archived webinar from April 09, the group of policy experts discuss the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and how these dollars can be used for classroom technology purchases and professional development initiatives.

Two key Democrats in Congress have expressed skepticism about the Obama administration's proposal to shift $1 billion out of Title I grants for districts into the separate Title I school improvement program in the fiscal 2010 federal budget.

Schools are advised not to build it into budgets just yet. School superintendents across California looked to the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund portion of ARRA to backfill cuts to state programs in education and social services. As California's economy continues to sour, there is a great deal of uncertainty as to whether the stimulus dollars will ever make it out of Sacramento-so much so that a group of congressional representatives from California wrote a letter on March 17, 2009, to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urging him to pass the federal dollars on to local schools to save teaching jobs, as Congress intende