There is very little that's more frustrating than trying to get good resources from the Federal Department of Education website. Besides the difficult to read font and the constant promoting of NCLB, the site lacks the teacher's touch that would give some indication of why this information is important. Nevertheless, you are paying for it and by golly, you need to use it because there is a lot at this site, and that includes grants, summer opportunities, lesson plans, free booklets, and research.

I also added a section at the end of this column where you can compare how well the United States does related to other countries in terms of spending on education, as well as the performance of each state and its ranking in various areas of pupil performance and allocation of funding.

Department of Education Related Resource Links

Here are some of the more useful links I dragged out of the site as well as others that are related to it.

A site full of links to most free materials offered by the government:
http://www.reacheverychild.com/feature/govt_resources.html

Free lessons by subject area: A very uneven listing of resources of which some are excellent. Loaded with primary documents of lessons for more high achieving students:
http://www.free.ed.gov/

A site that helps districts show how technology could be used and has been used. A tool kit that every district should check:
http://etoolkit.org/etoolkit/

Subscribe to education newsletters: There are a variety of them, but most of them read like propaganda for NCLB. Worth a look, but don't expect it to be easy to locate specific data. Perhaps the best one offers teacher updates to your email:
http://www.ed.gov/news/newsletters/index.html

The Math Panel. This site provides examples of programs that have shown progress in raising math scores: http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/mathpanel/index.html

What Works. A clearinghouse of programs the government has cited that work. You can build your own database. Again, not easy to use:
http://www.ed.gov/nclb/methods/whatworks/edpicks.jhtml

Education Research. Better known as ERIC, this is a very good place not only for research, but also for finding new ideas and avoiding reinventing the wheel:
http://www.eric.ed.gov/

Free publications. Especially good for ordering booklets for parents to use:
http://edpubs.ed.gov/

My top ten list: Very worthwhile!

• Advanced search function and resources order form:
  http://edpubs.ed.gov/AdvancedSearch.aspx?test=1
• A student guide to government resources for older students:
  http://www.students.gov/STUGOVWebApp/Public
• Constitution Day Lessons and Resources:
  http://www.reacheverychild.com/feature/constitution-resources.html
• Federal reserve lessons and free resources:
  For teaching economics and banking, these materials are again, very uneven in quality. But, they are free and some are quite worthwhile.
  http://www.reacheverychild.com/socialstudies/economics/federal.html
• A good federal resource on teaching economics through baseball:
  http://www.bos.frb.org/peanuts/indexnosound.htm
• US Mint Online Teaching Games For younger students. A very good way to get them interested:
  http://www.reacheverychild.com/feature/interactive-games.html#1
• The Department of Education Budget and Comparisons to Other Nations;
  The federal government is not a big player when it comes to funding education; it is left to state and local agencies to provide about 91 percent of the funding. Of course, statistics are made for manipulation, so that remaining percentage equates to a $68 billion dollar budget. On the other hand that only represents about 2.3 percent of the federal budget and pales when compared to the defense budget of $711 billion. Most of this goes to Title 1 grants, about $14.3 billion.
  Worldwide spending on education:
  http://www.oclc.org/reports/escan/economic/educationlibraryspending.htm
• This is an interesting graph that shows the difference between spending for both the defense:
  http://www.nea.org/lac/funding/images/EDvsDODfunding.pdf
• Education spending by the GNP of the country is also interesting:
  http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_spe-education-spending-of-gdp
• An interesting site is this one that provides general data about how each state ranks in a variety of categories from funding to reading levels:
  http://www.newamerica.net/education_budget_project/

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