Congressmen are challenging some of the biggest programs in the fiscal 2010 education budget request that Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently outlined to Senate and House appropriations subcommittees.

President Obama's budget proposal asks for $46.7 billion in discretionary funding, or $1.3 billion more than the 2009 level.

The most pointed questions Duncan faced involved a shift of $1.5 billion in Title I funding—federally funded programs for schools with high percentages of students from low-income families—into the department's School Improvement Grants program, which targets historically struggling schools and attempts to turn them around. Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, expressed concern about how the Title I cut might play out after $81 billion in federal education stimulus funding expires in two years.

On the issue of teacher quality, Obama's budget would provide $517 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund, including $30 million for a national recruitment campaign. Duncan described the core strategies behind the TIF as "innovative professional development and compensation systems," and he stressed that grants awarded under the program would be strongly rooted in cooperative efforts between districts and teachers.