Dive Summary:

• Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned Congress Wednesday that automatic budget cuts would hurt financial aid programs for college students, as well as undermine the Department of Education's ability to help students in high-poverty schools and improve high dropout rates.
• $2.7 billion in federal funding could be lost for programs like Title I, special education state grants and Head Start.
• The automatic cuts are the result of a bipartisan congressional panel's failure to come up with a plan for cutting $1.2 trillion of deficit over the next decade.

From the article:

WASHINGTON — Services would have to be slashed for more than 1.8 million disadvantaged students and thousands of teachers and aides would lose their jobs when automatic budget cuts kick in, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday. ...