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Federal History-Grant Program Takes Budget Hit for Fiscal 2011

A statue of Abraham Lincoln when he was nine years-old sits in front of Lincoln's boyhood home in Indiana, in this scene at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield, Ill. The complex houses one of the world's largest collections of Lincoln documents and artifacts, from letters he wrote as a young lawyer to an original copy of the Gettysburg Address.

—Seth Perlman/AP-File

Money targeted at helping teachers improve their instruction

By Erik W. Robelen

Just days before the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, Congress and the White House struck an overdue budget agreement that deals a blow to a federal program favored by many advocates for improved history instruction.

Under the plan, funding for the Teaching American History grants program, which has supplied more than $1 billion over the past decade for school districts and their nonprofit partners, is being reduced from $119 million in fiscal 2010 to $46 million in the current year.

The House and the Senate approved the measure late last week, and President Barack Obama was expected to...