The White House announced recently that its $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funded 682,779 jobs during the first quarter of 2010, including teachers, cops and road construction workers.

The figure reflects the number of people whose jobs were directly paid for with stimulus funds, a number reached after assessing more than 179,000 reports filed by state, local and corporate recipients.

But a recent report conducted by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington in Seattle, suggests that education jobs remain in an unprecedented decline. The analysis, "Schools in Crisis: Making Ends Meet," by Marguerite Roza, Chris Lozier and Cristina Sepe, found that while federal stimulus dollars have prevented states from making massive cuts to the education workforce, it had not helped in creating jobs.

Further, the analysis estimated a loss of 87,019 positions, including teachers, during the 2009-2010 school year.

To conduct the analysis, the authors relied on data for the current school year supplied by state education department officials for 21 states. As the authors attempted to collect data for this study, they discovered that most states were not able to provide reliable mid-year jobs data.

Even so, the analysis shows that most states did not grow their workforce during the 2009-2010 school year.

For example, K-12 employment declined in 13 of the 21 states for which data was available. Education employment grew in eight states. 

Those states include: North Carolina, New Mexico, Louisiana, Delaware, Washington, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Kansas, Connecticut, New York, Maine and New Hampshire.

On average, 1.4 percent job decline was assessed for the 2009-2010 school year.

Employment grew in Iowa, West Virginia, Nebraska, Kentucky, Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska and Oklahoma, the report shows.

The analysis also shows that in 2010, federal stimulus dollars have funded over 342,000 jobs, or 5.5 percent of the K-12 workforce. 

Still, public education is experiencing its biggest employment decline in years and these findings have implications for the system, the authors concluded, including fewer younger teachers, an aging workforce, a spike in average salaries and gaps in pension funds as fewer younger, lower-paid teachers enter the system.

Though it was difficult to obtain reliable data, the authors concluded that states should maintain jobs data available because it provides a great insight into how each public education system is responding to current conditions.

"Looking forward, jobs data will continue to be an important part of the public education story during the recession and recovery efforts," the report said.

EdMoney.org echoes that statement: transparency is crucial to understand how job loss and/or gains have affected the K-12 education workforce over time, and thereby, classrooms across the country.

We would love to hear your thoughts. Let us know what’s happening in your state or school district.