Yesterday, the US Department of Education released documents related to the second and final batch of funding (~$11 billion) under the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund.
Unable--due to the wording of the law--to??withhold future federal funding or??force states and districts to spend the money wisely, the Department was left to merely require states to provide information.
To the Department's credit though, they made the most of the situation by asking for some quite important data (e.g. on teacher quality, charters, low-performing schools) that will be interesting and hopefully influence discussions and policy down the road.
But, needless to say, $50 billion is A LOT of money to pay for some information.
I give this a slightly longer treatment here.