President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), a $787 billion economic stimulus plan, into law on February 17, 2009. ARRA includes significant funding for education, some of which will affect secondary schools directly.

The majority of ARRA’s education-related funding is targeted toward filling gaps in existing programs and providing governors with emergency funding necessary to keep states’ budgets afloat. This funding is not a substitute for the policy changes that would come with a thoughtful and substantive reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (known as the No Child Left Behind Act). However, it does provide U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan with considerable flexibility in allocating certain funds and an opportunity to advance some reforms that have the potential to improve educational outcomes.

Click here to see a statement from Governor Bob Wise, the Alliance for Excellent Education’s President, on ARRA.

Click here to see the Alliance’s summary of ARRA provisions that impact secondary schools.

Additional information on the education portion of the ARRA is available from the U.S. Department of Education at http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/leg/recovery/index.html.