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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many teachers and educators across the United States are at risk of losing their jobs in the next few months, the country's education secretary told a meeting of the National Governors Association on Sunday.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many teachers and educators across the United States are at risk of losing their jobs in the next few months, the country's education secretary told a meeting of the National Governors Association on Sunday. "I am very, very concerned about layoffs going into the next school year starting in September. Good superintendents are going to start sending out pink slips in March and April, like a month from now, as they start to plan for their budgets," said Arne Duncan, referring to the slips of paper included in some paychecks to notify a person of being fired....

By TERENCE CHEA SAN FRANCISCO – The nation's public schools are falling under severe financial stress as states slash education spending and drain federal stimulus money that staved off deep classroom cuts and widespread job losses. School districts have already suffered big budget cuts since the recession began two years ago, but experts say the cash crunch will get a lot worse as states run out of stimulus dollars. The result in many hard-hit districts: more teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, smaller paychecks, fewer electives and extracurricular activities, and decimated summer school programs. The situation is particularly ugly in California,...

The state's largest teachers union, which stood against Minnesota's application for millions in federal "Race to the Top" funding, plans a 10-week TV ad campaign to push the Legislature for more funding. Don't cut schools to balance the budget, Education Minnesota will say. But that plea leaves out important context, such as this from our side of the river: 1. During a deep recession, the union drives through $10 million worth of salary and benefit increases. 2. Which amounts to close to half of this year's operating deficit. 3. And then will be followed by TV ads urging the Legislature...

Central Pennsylvania school districts received millions of dollars in federal stimulus funding and were advised to use the money for one-time expenses, since it will last for only two years. But with the tight economy, many districts are using the money to fill gaps that otherwise may have had to be handled by cuts or tax increases. In addition to using the money for operating expenses, Harris said many districts are using the funding for small purchases rather than large-scale projects. Though districts were advised by federal officials on how to use the money, they were not restricted in its...

It happened at least once a year, every year. In a roomful of a dozen Harvard University financial officials, Jack Meyer, the hugely successful head of Harvard’s endowment, and Lawrence Summers, then the school’s president, would face off in a heated debate. The topic: cash and how the university was managing - or mismanaging - its basic operating funds. Through the first half of this decade, Meyer repeatedly warned Summers and other Harvard officials that the school was being too aggressive with billions of dollars in cash, according to people present for the discussions, investing almost all of it with...

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Students aren't the only ones benefiting from the billions of new dollars Washington is spending on college aid for the poor. An Associated Press analysis shows surging proportions of both low-income students and the recently boosted government money that follows them are ending up at for-profit schools, from local career colleges to giant publicly traded chains such as the University of Phoenix, Kaplan and Devry.

Title IX Expansions Bethany Stotts, November 20, 2009 During a November 10 press call on “Women Scientists and American Competitiveness,” speakers suggested that Title IX should be used to focus on “educational equity” and not just athletic equity. One speaker stressed, in particular, the importance of reaching out to federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes for Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Energy (DOE) for additional grant money. (Predoctoral women received 63% of the NIH’s awards in 2007, but only 25% of “competitive faculty grants” that same year, reports...

GRAND RAPIDS -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm told Kent County educators Friday the state's school financing system "clearly is not working" and said lawmakers must agree to both a short-term fix as well as long-term changes by the end of the year. But the gathering of superintendents and school board members also gave Granholm an earful, especially after she said lawmakers are "battle weary." "If elected people are weary, my level of sympathy for them is zilch," Catherine Mueller, Grand Rapids school board president, told Granholm. "They ran for these jobs and put themselves in this situation." Granholm appeared before educators...

Harvard University’s failed bet that interest rates would rise cost the school at least $500 million in payments to escape derivatives that backfired, reports Bloomberg. Harvard paid $497.6 million to investment banks during the fiscal year ended June 30 to get out of $1.1 billion of interest-rate swaps intended to hedge variable-rate debt for capital projects, the school’s annual report said. Harvard said it also agreed to pay $425 million over 30 to 40 years to offset an additional $764 million in swaps. The transactions began losing value last year as central banks slashed benchmark lending rates, forcing the university...

How Harvard Nearly Went Bankrupt After A Rogue Interest Rate Swap Went Very Sour Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/16/2009 17:45 -0500 The school that epitomizes the dangers of groupthink (especially by very intelligent people) and tends to get caught in both the virtues and vices of its own ingeniosity, saw just how expensive hubris can be in 2009. Harvard's endowment dropped 27.3% in 2009 to $27 after hitting roughly $10 billion higher the year before. /snip Yet most notable in the entire report is an interesting story for all those who claim that representing the $200 or so trillion...

Verbotten. story here.

A skirmish between powerful teachers’ unions and President Barack Obama over nearly $5 billion in education spending is shaping up as a preview of the battle to come over No Child Left Behind in Congress early next year. But the tables are turned: now the unions are worried that Obama, a Democratic ally, is going to be just as tough on them as President George W. Bush, a longtime foe.

Harvard University last year lost nearly $2 billion in the cash account it uses to pay for daily operations, by investing the money with its endowment fund instead of keeping it in safer, bank-like accounts. The loss, disclosed today in the university's annual financial report, resulted from Harvard financial executives taking the unusual step of placing a large mount of the university's cash with Harvard Management Co., the entity that runs the school's endowment and invests in stocks, hedge funds and other risky assets. Typically, companies and institutions manage their cash accounts conservatively in order to have funds readily available,...

The debate over No Child Left Behind re-authorization is upon us. Except it isn’t. In his recent speech kicking off the discussion, education secretary Arne Duncan asked not whether the central federal education law should be reauthorized, he merely asked how. Let’s step back a bit, and examine why we should end federal intervention in (and spending on) our nation’s schools… in one thousand words or less:

Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5. The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers. The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President Obama, who proposed the Challenge Fund during the presidential campaign, a...

Harvard’s endowment tumbled 27.3 percent in its latest fiscal year, largely because of problems with its private equity and hedge fund portfolios, lopping off $10 billion and shrinking its portfolio to $26 billion. The loss is the biggest percentage decline at Harvard in 40 years and has prompted a review of how it manages its money and allocates assets. Jane Mendillo, who took over the endowment on July 1, 2008, intends to manage more of the school’s assets directly instead of using outside money managers and to hire additional people to oversee the management by outsiders. In her letter describing...

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009 Students Borrow More Than Ever for College Heavy Debt Loads Mean Many Young People Can't Live Life They Expected By ANNE MARIE CHAKER Students are borrowing dramatically more to pay for college, accelerating a trend that has wide-ranging implications for a generation of young people. New numbers from the U.S. Education Department show that federal student-loan disbursements—the total amount borrowed by students and received by schools—in the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The amount of money students borrow has long been on the rise. But last year far surpassed...

Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised the federal economic recovery package Wednesday, saying it had saved more than 1,600 jobs in Orange County's public school system alone and 26,000 education jobs across Florida. Speaking at Jackson Middle in Orlando, the two called public school teachers the key to improving the country's economic situation and said many already do excellent work. But they also said that President Barack Obama's administration isn't interested in maintaining the status quo but instead wants to use the unprecedented resources now available as part of the recovery act -- some...