The New Teacher Project has issued an important statement warning Congress to decline Congressman David Obey’s proposal to strip $800 million of existing funds from the Department of Education’s most innovative grant initiatives in order to fund a new bill designed to address job cuts. While we believe it’s critical to provide support to public school districts that will lose a lot of dollars in the short term, it would be a huge mistake to take those dollars from funds that are tied to transformation—a huge missed opportunity to leverage a crisis. We need both short-term relief and long-term support for transformation. Without the second we perpetuate a disfunctional system. Please take a look at the New Teacher Project’s statement and pass it on.

Here’s the statement.

Also, see The New York Times editorial.