Open Illinois.org

A great article by Michele Mcneil on Education Week remarks on the apparent lack of transparency in the education funding resulting from the federal stimulus package. The article reads:

States and federal agencies are off to a slow and uneven start in allowing the public to track the first of $100 billion in new education funding under the federal economic-stimulus package, despite strong pledges of transparency for the program from the Obama administration.

“Although about $145 million in aid has been sent from the U.S. Department of Education to states and local districts so far, most states’ “recovery” Web sites contain only general information about the stimulus program and no information on the money that’s flowed into their states.

The federal government’s main online portal on the stimulus, recovery.gov, is still without any state-by-state information of money that’s already filtered down from federal agencies to the states, and most Education Department spending data is buried in Excel spreadsheets deep in its departmental Web site.”

The article also highlights some of the more detailed and transparent recovery websites for various states across the country. Maryland, Virginia, Oregon and Washington, for example, all provide recovery websites which utilize interactive maps to show detailed information on how their portions of the stimulus money is being spent in each county. Connecticut also provides detailed lobbying information on their recovery site. Illinois, on the other hand, does not fare so well in terms of its transparency website recovery.illinois.gov. Our state can learn a thing or two from these other states.

Read the full article.