Ending months of delays, Congress on Jan. 22 finally approved a budget for fiscal year 2004, which began in October. The measure seals the fate of the Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) program, while ensuring the survival of at least two other major ed-tech initiatives that President Bush had hoped to cut. Bush was expected to sign the bill shortly.

The massive $328 billion spending measure includes funding for the Departments of Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs. It ends a three-month congressional impasse that Senate Democrats carried through the winter recess in objection to a number of controversial policy addendums, including a provision for private school vouchers in Washington, D.C., new media ownership rules, and a mandate that would require the rapid destruction of firearm sales records, to name a few. But Democrats, leery of bringing the federal government to a standstill, eventually acceded to the provisions, and the measure passed 65 to 28 in an afternoon vote.

Though many educators say they are pleased to finally know exactly how much federal money will be at their disposal in 2004, some groups, including the Consortium for School Networking, contend the final education budget presents a "mixed blessing" for schools, providing sizable increases for larger, formula-based grant programs such as Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), while decreasing or, in some cases, eliminating support entirely for other key technology initiatives.

Perhaps the biggest blow for ed-tech advocates was the exclusion of the popular PT3 program--a $62.5 million effort that promotes partnerships between colleges of education and K-12 schools to help new teachers integrate technology into their instruction. Though PT3 had appeared in neither the House nor the Senate appropriations bills, many ed-tech lobbyists held out hope for the initiative, making efforts to have it reinstated during final negotiations.

In November, Don Knezek, chief executive officer of the International Society for Technology in Education, predicted in an interview with eSchool News that losing PT3 would make it increasingly difficult for schools to recruit high-quality teachers who come to the classroom prepared to integrate technology into the curriculum. Knezek said he wasn't concerned so much about the loss of the funding itself as he was about the loss of ideals that likely would result from the absence of federal leadership on this topic.

"K-12 education is a system," he said. "We need to take a systematic approach, and that includes recruiting highly qualified teachers who know how to use technology."

The Bush administration has long believed that PT3 is unnecessary, because the federal Improving Teacher Quality program--which appears in the new budget--already provides nearly $3 billion to support teacher preparation and professional development initiatives.