The Daily Churn: Tuesday

What’s churning:

Updated: The U.S. House this afternoon passed a measure that will provide $10 billion in federal aid to school districts to blunt the impact of teacher job losses.

The bill also contains $16 billion to continue higher-than-normal federal Medicaid payments to states. Failure to provide that aid would have hit state budgets, including Colorado’s, hard and created a domino effect of cuts to other programs, such as education.

The Senate already has passed the measure, and President Obama is expected to sign it.

The 2010 results of the Colorado Student Assessment Program were released by the state Department of Education today. We’ve got full coverage linked from our home page.

And let’s not forget that it’s primary day. The Democratic Party primary for U.S. Senate has become an education story because insurgent Andrew Romanoff has made incumbent Michael Bennet’s stewardship of Denver Public Schools a major campaign issue.

On tap today:

And here’s the pitch: Almost lost in CSAP and primary fever is the fact that Colorado’s Race to the Top sales team made its pitch to reviewers in Washington, D.C. today. Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien and education Commissioner Dwight Jones lead the delegation. Nina Lopez, CDE stimulus coordinator, also was in the lineup. All three were on the team that presented the state’s unsuccessful round one bid last spring. We’ll have an interview with Jones on the site this afternoon.

Good reads from elsewhere: