Title I

Last weekend the Obama Administration released its “Blueprint for Reform,” a document that discusses the president’s proposal for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). On the whole, the document provides some additional, though hardly thorough, details for programs the Administration already alluded to in its fiscal year 2011 budget request. These include the consolidation of several K-12 education programs and the inclusion of a state definition of a “highly effective” teacher and principal as part of the accountability structure. But the document also briefly mentions, though provides no specifics on, a provision that has recently been overlooked in President Obama’s and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s discussion of ESEA reauthorization: Title I comparability.

Comparability refers to a current provision of Title I that requires school districts to provide equitable state and local resources to both their low-income, Title I schools and their higher-income, non-Title I schools. Theoretically, this provision ensures that any federal Title I funds are used to provide additional services to low-income students on top of the baseline provided through state and local funds.

However, current law allows school districts to demonstrate comparability through methods that deeply obscure the amount of state and local funds Title I schools actually receive. For example, districts can demonstrate comparability by comparing student-instructional staff ratios between Title I and non-Title I schools or presenting the federal government with a district-wide salary schedule that demonstrates that all teachers with similar qualification earn the same amount of money across the district. These current methods overlook the variation in teacher pay due to years of experience, a significant factor in teacher salaries. In addition, it blurs the distinction between certified teachers and instructional staff in general, which could include teacher aides and other uncertified staff.

Because more experienced, and therefore higher paid teachers tend to work in higher-income schools, low-income, Title I schools employ primarily less experienced, lower-paid teachers. As a result, higher-income schools receive a greater share of state and local funds to pay for their teachers than low-income schools. Without a dramatic overhaul of the comparability provision, higher-income schools will continue to monopolize state and local resources, short changing low-income students and schools.

Unfortunately, the “Blueprint” is short on specifics for teacher comparability. It only says: “Over time, districts will be required to ensure that their high-poverty schools receive state and local funding levels (for personnel and relevant nonpersonnel expenditures) comparable to those received by their low-poverty schools.”

While this statement does seem to suggest that actual monetary expenditures will be required to demonstrate comparability, it does not clarify what expenditures exactly that will include. Without clearly specifying that districts must demonstrate comparability by including variation in teacher pay as a result of years of experience, rather than student-instructional staff ratios or salary schedules, the Obama Administration leaves these details up to Congress and leaves low-income students vulnerable. Past attempts to strengthen the comparability provision have been wildly unpopular with teachers unions and any significant improvements are likely to be hard won. But including a stronger version of comparability in ESEA reauthorization is an important step towards bolstering Title I schools and ensuring that they have the strongest teaching staff possible.

Read this report to learn about the Federal Education Budget Project’s recommendations for strengthening comparability.

It’s been a while since we last looked at the status of the education funds allocated through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). As we have discussed before, the ARRA allocated nearly $100 billion for education programs such as Title I, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) State Grants, and a new program called the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. Last we looked at U.S. Department of Education data on the obligation and disbursement of these funds in September, things were moving a bit slow. Six months later, it appears that while some funds have gone out quickly, others continue to lag.

As of March 5, 2010, the Department of Education had made nearly 73 percent of the $98.2 billion in ARRA education funds available for states to spend (aka obligated). Of that obligated money, the Department had disbursed 50.8 percent, or $36.3 billion, to states. This means that less than 40 percent of total allocated education ARRA funds have actually left federal coffers for expenditure.

Almost all of the currently available Pell Grant funds (about half of the total obligation) have been disbursed to the states for use. This is not surprising because Pell Grants are automatically distributed via a formula to students that qualify for the grants. States do not need to apply for the funds and the disbursement process is relatively streamlined and familiar. Pell Grants are also disbursed at the beginning of each semester, meaning that all grants for the current school year should have been made by early 2010. The remaining half of the allocated funds is likely to go out to states just as smoothly as soon as the 2010-2011 school year begins.

In contrast, the Department of Education has been disbursing both Title I and IDEA funds relatively slowly. Back in September, only 12.2 percent of Title I and 9.4 percent of IDEA funds had been disbursed. Six months later, those disbursement rates have increased to 22.8 percent and 24.0 percent, respectively (while the amount of obligated funds has doubled). As we’ve mentioned before, this slow rate of disbursement could be attributed to onerous application processes at the state and local level for funds and the monthly process by which schools and school districts pay for employees and other services. This is troubling because summer break is fast approaching, meaning that stimulus spending for the 2009-2010 school year will soon begin to wind down. Similarly, the ARRA funds are set to expire on September 30^th, 2011, giving schools and school districts a year and a half to spend more than three-quarters of the total Title I or IDEA ARRA funds.

State Fiscal Stabilization Funds (SFSF), on the other hand, appear to have been disbursed at a sensible speed. As of March 5^th, 59.9 percent of Education Stabilization Funds and 47.5 percent of Government Services funds had been disbursed to states. The relatively high rate of disbursement can primarily be attributed to the high need for these additional funds at the state and local level to fill budget gaps and the fact that the funds were disbursed through existing state funding formulas. Is it expected that states will spend the vast majority of their SFSF monies by the end of fiscal year 2010 with only a few states allocating remaining funds directly to school districts through Title I formulas in fiscal year 2011.

Of course, the Department of Education has yet to disburse any ARRA funds for some programs. These include Teacher Quality Enhancement grants, State Longitudinal Data Systems grants, and Investing In Innovation grants. Additionally, the only funds that have been disbursed for Race to the Top grants are likely for honoraria for reviewers and other administrative costs. These programs are all competitively awarded based on state and local grant proposals. However, they make up a relatively small portion of the total ARRA education funds.

Clearly, the life-span of the ARRA is far from over. More than half of the total funds allocated for education programs still need to be disbursed to states and spent at the local level. At the same time, school systems around the country appear to be in desperate fiscal straits as state education budgets continue to take drastic hits. Will the current ARRA funds be enough to fill these gaps? Or will the Congress need to pass another stimulus bill to keep schools afloat? Ed Money Watch will be following this process every step of the way.

Today, the Fordham Foundation released a report titled “America’s Private Public Schools” that describes the phenomenon of public schools that serve virtually no poor students.[1] The four states with the highest proportions of private public schools are New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Arizona. The first three states also have relatively low free and reduced price lunch participation rates (less than 30 percent) and poverty rates (11 percent or less). Arizona, however, is the outlier. Though 12 percent of schools in Arizona are considered private public schools through this analysis, nearly 40 percent of Arizona public school students participate in FRPL and nearly 20 percent live at or below the poverty line.

But what do high proportions of private public schools, or schools that serve few poor students, mean for state Title I allocations? Title I is the largest federal K-12 education program that aims to provide additional funds for services for low income students. Our analysis, described below, suggests that states with large concentrations of private public schools can feasibly get large amounts of Title I funding despite low overall poverty rates. This is counterintuitive because significant numbers of schools in these states serve virtually no poor students. However, a deeper look suggests that high concentrations of poverty in certain areas in these states may partially explain these patterns.

For our analysis, we used Federal Education Budget Project data on state demographics and federal funding in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Arizona to calculate Title I distributions per poor student in each state. Given the first three states’ relatively low poverty rates (ranking 49^th, 46^th and 47^th, respectively), one would assume that they would receive relatively low Title I allocations per poor student. However, that is not necessarily the case. In 2008, Massachusetts received the 15^th highest per poor student Title I allocation in the country, while New Jersey received the 18^th and Connecticut received the 22^nd.

Arizona’s Title I allocation, on the other hand, is more closely aligned with the size of its impoverished population. Arizona had the 24^th highest concentration of poor students and received the 25^th highest per poor student Title I allocation.

However, examining Title I distributions alone overlooks the role that poverty concentrations – where certain areas within a state serve a large proportion of impoverished students while other areas do not – play in Title I distributions. Typically, schools and districts with high poverty concentrations relative to their state average, receive more Title I funding per pupil than schools and districts with low concentrations because of provisions in some Title I funding formulas. Because low-income schools and districts typically receive less state and local funding than high income schools, we can get a sense of whether high poverty concentrations exist in a state through an indicator calculated by the Department of Education called School Finance Inequity. This indicator represents the degree to which schools within a state are equitably funded, assigning more equitable states a low value, and less equitable states a high value.

According to 2007 data, Massachusetts was the 4^th most inequitable state in the country, indicating that there are likely areas of high and low concentrations of poverty in the state and at least partially explaining the high percentage of private public schools and high Title I allocations. However, in Massachusetts, this high rate of inequity is not the result of under-funding poor districts. Instead, Massachusetts has a progressive education funding formula that provides additional funds for poor districts resulting in inequities that actually favor poor schools.

The other three states are somewhat more equitable than Massachusetts, though still likely have areas of high poverty concentrations that are obscured by other considerations in state funding mechanisms. New Jersey and Arizona[2] were the 11^th and 14^th most inequitable states, while Connecticut was the 25^th most inequitable.

The Fordham report reveals an important and rarely-mentioned aspect of the public school system – public schools that serve few, if any, poor students. Although these schools serve only 4 percent of the public school population, we need to better understand how they affect Title I distributions in their states and school districts.

Last week the Center for American Progress (CAP) released Bitter Pill, Better Formula, its second report on the funding formulas used under Title I, Part A, the largest federal K-12 education program. Funding for Title I, Part A ($14.5 billion in 2010) is currently distributed via four separate formulas defined in federal law. The formulas were designed by Congress mainly to distribute funding to school districts based on the number or concentration of students living in poverty, but other factors are also included in the calculations, such as hold-harmless provisions, small-state minimums, and per-pupil expenditures.

In the new report, CAP agues that Congress should reform the Title I, Part A formulas using a single, simplified calculation that would increase the relationship between the funding states and school districts receive and the concentration of students in poverty. As authors Cynthia Brown and Raegan Miller note, the new formula would require some significant political will because it would create winners and losers.

The proposed formula draws primarily from the two most targeted Title I, Part A formulas, Targeted and Education Finance Incentive, and refines some of the measures used in each formula. The formula would only allocate Title I funds to school districts that educate 10 or more children living in poverty and who make up at least 5 percent of the district’s total population. It would distribute funds based on a weighted measure of the concentration of school age children living in families below the poverty line, rather than raw counts of children living in poverty that are used under some of the current formulas. The proposed formula also would include a measure of state fiscal effort for education that takes into account total state expenditure on education (rather than per pupil expenditure) and total personal income (rather than per capita personal income). Finally, the proposed formula would include a revised hold-harmless provision that limits the size of Title I funding increases or decreases based on the concentrations of children in poverty.

Interestingly, Brown and Miller’s proposed formula would not include a measure of equity for school funding within states. Under the current Title I Educational Finance Incentive Grant (EFIG) formula, states that equitably fund their school districts receive additional funds. However, the authors claim that this current provision penalizes states that provide more funding to low income school districts than to higher income districts. Eliminating this provision, the authors argue, would encourage states to continue to provide additional funds to needy districts.

Such drastic changes to the Title I, Part A formula would come at a cost for some states and school districts. For example, the proposed formula would take away significant funding from small rural states like Wyoming. Some small states currently enjoy large per poor student allocations under Title I, Part A because they are guaranteed minimum funding amounts each year. Similarly, large school districts that educate significant numbers of poor students, but whose poor populations are not a large share of the total population, would also see drops in funding per poor student. The proposed formula would only take into account concentrations of impoverished students, not absolute numbers.

The changes, however, would free up Title I, Part A funds for states and school districts that have traditionally been overlooked by current formulas. For example, southern and western states would receive more funding per poor pupil under the proposed formula because they would no longer be penalized for lower per pupil education spending. Small and medium sized school districts with significant concentrations of poor students would also gain more funding because the formula would target funds to high concentrations of low-income students regardless of the absolute number of such students in a district.

While the details of the proposed Title I formula are controversial, the CAP report will certainly make it harder for anyone to defend unfair Title I formulas that divert funds from states and school districts most indeed of extra assistance. At a minimum, the new report shows that Congress needs to prioritiz reforming the Title I formulas when it reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act this year. Ed Money Watch will be following the details as they unfold.

Today, the Federal Education Budget Project released Summary and Analysis of President Obama's Education Budget Request - Fiscal Year 2011, an issue brief that provides a summary of the President's education budget request, released on Monday, February 1st.

This instant summary and analysis covers key parts of the president’s proposed education budget, including funding levels for K-12 programs, policy changes for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and details on higher education programs, such as student loans and Pell Grants. Additionally, the issue brief includes a table of major program level funding changes and proposed program cuts and eliminations.

The issue brief can be downloaded here.

In this month’s issue of the Title I Monitor (subscription needed), former Congressional Research Service analyst Wayne Riddle describes the effect new 2008 Census poverty data will have on Title I State Grants in 2010.[1] He finds that though some states experienced significant changes in the number of school-age children living in poverty from 2007 to 2008, the impact of these changes on actual Title I allocations will be small. This occurs because Title I formulas take into account how a state’s share of the impoverished population changes relative to other states’ shares, not how a state’s impoverished population changed independently.

Federal Title I funding is subject to the annual appropriations process. As a result, state allocations are based on shares of a fixed level of funding set each year that does not adjust to the number of eligible children. This means that if a state experiences a 5 percent increase in the impoverished population from 2007 to 2008, its Title I allocation may actually drop because the overall increase in the impoverished population was 7 percent across the country.

The actual changes in school age poverty counts are somewhat more complicated. Some states, such as Florida, Arizona, Illinois, and California, experienced increases of 6 percent or more in their impoverished populations from 2007 to 2008. However, the percentage change in each state’s share of the overall number of impoverished students was smaller than the actual growth. For example, even though Florida’s impoverished population grew 7.4 percent, its share of the total impoverished population only increased by 6.6 percent. This means that the increase in Florida’s Title I allocation for 2010 will not be as large as its increase in poor students.

Conversely, states whose impoverished populations shrunk significantly, such as Alabama, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Wyoming, experienced an even larger drop in their share of the country’s total impoverished population. For example, Massachusetts saw a 10.4 percent decrease in the number of students living in poverty. However, it saw an 11.4 percent decrease in its total share of the impoverished population. As a result, Massachusetts will experience a decrease in its Title I allocation for 2010 that is larger than the drop in the number of poor students.

These changes, while complicated on the surface, could spell trouble for states with rapidly growing poor populations. If the growth in Title I allocations does not keep pace with the growth in the number of poor students, schools may be unable to provide some services for these needy populations over time. Additionally, the lag in Census poverty data – two years at this point – means that the allocation of federal funds cannot be immediately responsive to economic disruptions like the current fiscal crisis.

These issues, as well as other pressing problems with the current iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, should be tackled during the reauthorization process. Now, more than ever, we need flexible and responsive federal education programs.

The Federal Education Budget Project (FEBP), Ed Money Watch’s parent initiative, recently made available updated state and district-level student demographic data on its website http://www.edbudgetproject.org. FEBP maintains an extensive database of state and school district level funding, demographic, and achievement data that is continuously updated as new information becomes available.

Now users can view, download, and compare student demographics including enrollment, race, poverty, and participation in special programs in 2008 for all 50 states and nearly 14,000 school districts in the country. The race, program participation, and enrollment data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data while student poverty comes from the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program.

These new data can help users understand how federal funds for various programs are distributed among states and school districts. For example, a user can tell an interesting story about the distribution of Title I funds in 2008 using the new demographic data and the custom comparison function available on the website.

The custom comparison function allows a user to select a particular school district of interest and then compare it to similar school districts within the state or other states. In one such case, we selected Cheektowaga-Maryvale Union Free School District in New York state and compared it to other districts in New York with student enrollment within 10 percent of Cheektowaga-Maryvale. Additionally, we asked the comparison tool to display each district’s 2008 student poverty rate, free and reduced price lunch enrollment rate, and Title I funding. See display below:

We found that districts with similar student poverty rates did not always receive similar amounts of Title I funding. For example, Cheetowaga-Maryvale received slightly less than $345,000 in Title I funds in 2008 while Phoenix Central School District received more than $514,000. This disparity is surprising because both districts are similarly sized (2,354 versus 2,329) and have similar poverty rates (12.2 percent versus 12.8 percent). As we have explained in the past (see complete post here), these variations are due to complexities in the Title I formulas that blur the relationship between poverty and Title I funding.

We hope that these new data, and the funding, demographic, and achievement data we will continue to add to the Federal Education Budget Project website, are helpful as Congress begins to discuss reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and other education-related programs. Check out the new data here.

As soon as the Department of Education released American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF), Title I, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), they urged states and school districts to use the funds for one-time investments in education like professional development and instructional materials. Recurring or on-going expenses, like teacher salaries, would create “funding cliffs” or expenses the states and school districts would be unable to cover after the ARRA funding ran out. At the same time, however, the Department of Education encouraged the states and school districts to use the funds to quickly save or create jobs – a difficult task if expenditures cannot be recurring.

So, what did school districts decide to do with the dramatic increase in federal funds provided through the ARRA? A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report suggests that a large percentage of school districts plan to use 50 percent or more of their ARRA funds, particularly SFSF funds, to save or create jobs.

Specifically, the report found that two-thirds of school districts that responded to a GAO survey planned to use 50 percent or more of their SFSF monies to save or create jobs. This is not surprising, however, because SFSF monies are the least restricted of all the ARRA funds and can be used for most operating expenses. A significant portion of school districts plan to use half or more of their Title I and IDEA funds to save or create jobs as well.

The percent of school districts expecting to spend ARRA funds to save and create jobs varied by state as well. For example, more than 80 percent of districts in Georgia, Michigan, and Florida reported spending half or more of their SFSF monies on jobs. In contrast, fewer than 20 percent expected to do the same in Florida. Similarly, more than 40 percent of districts in North Carolina and Iowa expected to spend half or more of their Title I ARRA funds on jobs, while less than 10 percent did in Mississippi.

These findings suggest that a significant number of school districts, particularly those in states like Georgia, Michigan, and Florida, chose to spend their ARRA funds on recurring expenses like teacher salaries rather than one-time activities like professional development. These expenditures create unavoidable funding cliffs that could spell trouble for these districts when ARRA funds run out in 2010 or 2011. The districts will likely be forced to make difficult staffing decisions or find money from other sources to cover these on-going costs.

However, the possibility of a second federal stimulus package, aimed directly at education jobs, is not out of the question. The Jobs for Main Street Act, passed by the House in December, provides $23 billion for just that purpose. Should it pass the Senate, it could be the saving grace for these school districts and others just beginning to struggle with difficult staffing decisions.

In November 2009, Sara Mead gave a presentation on funding streams for PreK-3rd at a Harvard Graduate School of Education PreK-3rd Institute. The presentation offers a good primer on the federal policy climate for PreK-3rd reforms, providing a comprehensive overview of the federal funding streams that states, schools, and ECE providers can use to support PreK-3rd work, as well as a look at the recent and upcoming federal policy developments that create potential opportunities for PreK-3rd reformers. Updated January 2010.

The Rural School and Community Trust – a national nonprofit organization addressing the crucial relationship between good schools and thriving communities – recently released Why Rural Matters 2009: State and Regional Challenges and Opportunities, a study documenting important rural education issues in all 50 states. The report provides interesting and comprehensive data on the little discussed issue of rural school districts and the students they serve, ranking states on the relative importance and urgency of rural education. It also points to an issue we’re interested in at Ed Money Watch – Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I funding formulas and how they effect rural students differently than their urban and suburban peers.

While much attention is given to problems in large urban school districts in the wider education policy discourse, this report is one of the few that focuses on the unique issues rural school districts confront. Given that these school districts serve 20 percent of the public school students in the U.S., it is critical that we identify and address the challenges rural school districts face in educating these students.

The report uses student academic achievement data from the Federal Education Budget Project, Ed Money Watch’s parent initiative, and other National Center for Education Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau data to examine the status of rural education in each state in terms of student diversity, educational expenditures and other policies, academic outcomes, school district characteristics, and the overall importance of rural education.

The report concludes that rural students living in states with more rural poverty and socio-economic diversity score lower on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) tests and graduate at lower rates than their peers in states with less rural poverty and diversity. Because the characteristics of rural students and schools vary widely across states, rural schools and students in some states face larger challenges than others.

Without a doubt, rural schools face challenges that urban and suburban schools do not. And while these challenges vary, 32.3 percent of schools and 19.4 percent of students in America are in rural areas, not an insignificant share of the student population. But federal policies often overlook rural districts and the students they serve.

Take for example the ESEA Title I funding formulas, which distribute $14.5 billion each year to local school districts. Provisions in the formulas meant to target funds to students from low income families can put rural school districts at a disadvantage, providing them with fewer federal funds to address the challenges their low-income students face. These provisions are intended account for variation in state per pupil expenditures, state size, and concentrations of impoverished students. For example, the provision that attempts to direct more aid to states where education is more expensive actually benefits wealthy states that are able to spend more on education. Because a large proportion of rural school districts are located in states with below average per pupil expenditures, these districts receive less funding than they otherwise would have.

The negative consequences for rural school districts hidden in the Title I formulas may be unintentional, but are serious nonetheless. They leave students in rural school districts at a disadvantage, while favoring students in large urban areas or in states that already invest large amounts of money in public education. The Rural School and Community Trust report highlights the need to reexamine these formulas to target the students and school districts that need them most, including those in rural areas.