The House Democrats’ package that passed Thursday cuts President Barack Obama’s signature education program, Race to the Top, and other administration reform efforts by $800 million, using the savings to help offset the cost of more Pell Grants and a new $10 billion fund to save teacher jobs.

By Walter Alarkon at The Hill

The war and education spending bill passed by the House is exposing the raging debate within the Democratic Party over the Obama administration’s school reforms.

The House Democrats’ package that passed Thursday cuts President Barack Obama’s signature education program, Race to the Top, and other administration reform efforts by $800 million, using the savings to help offset the cost of more Pell Grants and a new $10 billion fund to save teacher jobs.

Obama has threatened to veto a bill that includes those cuts. The White House and senior Senate Democrats have argued that money for the reform programs, which encourages schools to accept changes such as performance-backed pay for teachers, should be left alone.

The intra-party fight over school reform has been going on since Obama took office. The $862 billion stimulus, which Democrats were crafting even before Obama’s inauguration, included $4.35 billion for Race to the Top, despite the program having no track record on the national level. That number would have been more if not for the protests of House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), a main architect of the stimulus who has questioned a program that benefits only a select number of states and gives the Education Secretary wide discretion over how funds are disbursed.

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