70227 Federal Funding and WGU
Submitted by Ted on Tue, 2007/02/27 - 7:18am.
Over the years our federal government has provided little support to transforming classrooms to eLearningi with a focus on the teacher and student.
The federal budget for all of education is $57 billion (about $700 per student). Only $272 million ($4 per K-12 student) is in the 2007 budget for Educational Technology State Grants. The Bush 2008 budget proposal has $0.
But we can depend on a ray of hope to strike every now and then.
I just got the news that the U.S. Department of Labor has awarded $3 million grant to the Western Governor’s University. The target is a three year test of a new online education program for rural teachers focused on math and science. This web-based program is expected to then be implemented on a national scale.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/PFshowstory.cfm?ArticleID=6880
This is great news for Arizona. Not only is Governor Napolitano an active member of the board of the WGU, but Arizona’s WGU leader Jim Breitinger jbreitinger@wgu.edu has been supportive within eSATSi and GAZEL.
This development program will coincide with the Arizona 3 year middle school math pilot that will require teacher education throughout Arizona.
At least some folks are realizing that long lasting and seemingly unreachable K-12 policy goals are ready solved with the application of eLearning.
