Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is intended to support state and local efforts to ensure that all children reach challenging standards by providing additional resources for schools and students that have the farthest to go. Since the program's inception in 1965, there has been a tension between the goal of serving the maximum number of needy schools and students and the goal of concentrating the funds on a smaller number of schools and students in order to have a more significant impact on their achievement.

The 1994 reauthorization of ESEA included changes to Title I allocation provisions in an effort to target more Title I funds on the districts and schools with the highest concentrations of poverty. This study examines the impact of those changes on school-level targeting. The study also examines Title I funding for secondary schools, the impact of waivers on targeting, funding for schoolwide programs and targeted assistance schools, funding for services for private school students, and the amount of funds retained at the district level.

The study draws on several data sources:

• Extant survey data for nationally representative samples of schools. Four surveys were used: the Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS) for 1990-91 and 1993-94, the Public School Survey on Education Reform in 1995-96, and the Follow-Up Survey of Education Reform in 1997-98. These data provide a national picture of changes in which schools receive Title I funds.

• District records of Title I school selection and allocations. School allocation records from 140 districts, collected by the Study of Education Resources and Federal Funding, are used to provide a national picture of the distribution of Title I funds among schools in 1997-98. In addition, school allocation records from a purposive sample of 17 large urban school districts for the 1994-95, 1995-96, and 1996-97 school years are used to examine change in school allocations. Although these 17 districts are not nationally representative, they account for a relatively high proportion (17 percent) of all Title I funds.

• Title I state performance reports. State reports for 1990-91 through 1996-97 were used to examine changes in the number of schools implementing schoolwide programs.

• Analysis of Title I targeting waivers. To examine the impact of waivers on the targeting of Title I funds, the study examined waivers granted by the U.S. Department of Education for the first three school years since the waiver provisions were enacted (1995-96 through 1997-98) and by States under the Ed-Flex authority (based on the first-year state Ed-Flex reports, which primarily cover waivers for the 1996-97 school year).

In this report, school poverty levels are based on the percentage of students eligible for the free and reduced-price lunch program. The term "highest-poverty schools" is used to refer to schools where at least 75 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. "High-poverty schools" include all schools at or above the 50 percent poverty level, and "low-poverty schools" include schools below 35 percent poverty.

The proportion of the highest-poverty schools receiving Title I funds increased significantly after the 1994 reauthorization, while the proportion of low-poverty schools receiving these funds declined.

• The proportion of the highest-poverty schools (those with poverty rates of 75 percent or more) receiving Title I funds increased from 79 percent in 1993-94 to 95 percent in 1997-98. During the same period, the proportion of low-poverty schools (those with poverty rates of less than 35 percent) receiving such funds declined from 49 percent to 36 percent.

• In 1997-98, for the first time, half (50 percent) of all Title I schools had poverty rates of 50 percent or more, up from 41 percent of Title I schools prior to reauthorization (1993-94).

Comparing school allocations, however, provides a mixed picture of the extent of school-level targeting.

• The highest-poverty schools received nearly half (46 percent) of Title I funds in the 1997-98 school year, although they accounted for only 27 percent of Title I schools. Schools with poverty of 50 percent or more receive 73 percent of Title I funds. Low-poverty schools receive only 18 percent of the funds, although they account for 33 percent of Title I schools.

• However, low-poverty schools tend to receive substantially larger allocations per low-income student ($771) compared with the highest-poverty schools ($475). Overall, funding for Title I schools amounted to $472 per low-income student.

The above school allocation data underestimates total school-level spending for Title I, because 16 percent of Title I funds are used for districtwide programs and services related to instruction and instructional support -- services that affect teachers and students in schools throughout the district, although they are not allocated to individual schools.

• These districtwide instruction-related services include teachers and instructional support staff who serve more than one school, districtwide preschool and summer school programs, and professional development (but not program administration). In addition, because the allocation data are based on FY 1997 appropriations, the average allocation amounts may seem low compared to current (FY 1999) appropriations levels, which are 7 percent higher than in FY 1997.

• If the school allocation estimates are adjusted to take both of these factors into account, the average school funding level rises from $472 to $613 per low-income student for the 1999-2000 school year. These school funding levels range from $617 in the highest-poverty schools to $1,001 in the lowest-poverty schools, and from $643 in elementary schools to $483 in secondary schools.

In the 17 urban districts, there was a substantial shift of Title I funds after reauthorization, away from low-poverty schools and toward high-poverty schools.

• The total amount of funds received by low-poverty schools fell by 87 percent from 1994-95 to 1996-97, while funding for high-poverty schools rose - by 16 percent for schools at or above 75 percent poor and by 20 percent for schools between 50 and 74 percent poor.

• The highest-poverty schools received $492 per low-income student in 1996-97, about the same level of funding as in 1993-94 - suggesting that the increased funding for high-poverty schools supported Title I programs in newly-funded schools rather than a greater intensity of services in existing Title I programs.

Secondary schools are less likely than elementary schools to receive Title I funds and, if funded, tend to receive smaller allocations per low-income pupil.

• Secondary schools accounted for 23 percent of all schools in 1997-98, but only 11 percent of Title I schools. The percentage of all secondary schools receiving Title I funds declined from 36 percent in 1993-94 to 29 percent in 1997-98.

• Secondary schools account for 33 percent of low-income students (and 44 percent of all students) but receive only 15 percent of Title I funds. Secondary schools are not only less likely than elementary schools to receive Title I funds, they also receive substantially smaller allocations (averaging $372 per low-income student, compared with $495 in elementary schools).

However, the highest-poverty secondary schools are nearly as likely to receive Title I funds as the highest-poverty elementary schools.

• The percentage of the highest-poverty secondary schools receiving Title I funds rose markedly after reauthorization, from 61 percent in 1993-94 to 74 percent in 1995-96 and 93 percent in 1997-98, compared with 95 percent of the highest-poverty elementary schools in 1997-98.

• Funding levels in the highest-poverty secondary schools ($446 per low-income student) are similar to those in the highest-poverty elementary schools ($479).

Title I funding for secondary schools in the 17 urban districts increased 43 percent after the 1994 reauthorization changes went into effect (from 1994-95 to 1996-97), compared with a 10 percent increase for elementary schools.

• The highest-poverty secondary schools saw a 66 percent increase in per pupil funding, while low-poverty secondary schools experienced a 91 percent decline in funds.

Since the enactment of the waiver provisions, a total of 746 waivers of statutory requirements have been granted either by the U.S. Department of Education or by Ed-Flex states.

• Ed-Flex waiver decisions accounted for two-thirds (68 percent) of the waivers.

• One-third of all waivers (29 percent) concerned Title I within-district targeting provisions.

• Title I targeting waivers were more common at the federal level than in the Ed-Flex states. Of the total of 220 targeting waivers, 134 were granted by the U.S. Department of Education and 86 were granted by Ed-Flex states. Targeting waivers accounted for 55 percent of federal waivers and 17 percent of Ed-Flex waivers.

Requests to serve ineligible schools were by far the most common type of Title I waiver requests (71 percent of targeting waiver requests).

• Requests to serve ineligible schools were often accompanied by requests to provide schools with allocations that were less than 125 percent of the district per-pupil allocation (30 percent of targeting waiver requests). However, in many cases districts were able to serve ineligible schools without going below the 125 percent minimum (often by choosing not to serve high schools and middle schools).

• A smaller number of districts requested waivers in order to give higher per-pupil allocations to schools with lower poverty rates (21 percent) or to skip some eligible schools (12 percent).

Schools affected by targeting waivers amount to a small proportion of all Title I schools nationally.

• In 1995-96, the total number of Title I schools in districts with federal targeting waivers (312 schools) amounted to less than 1 percent of all Title I schools. Although the number of Title I schools in districts with Ed-Flex waivers is unknown, it is probably similar to or less than the number in districts with federal waivers.

Waivers of Title I targeting provisions frequently resulted in substantial reductions in per-pupil allocations for eligible schools in the waiver districts.

• Waivers allowing 66 districts to provide Title I services in 88 ineligible schools caused a 33 percent increase in the number of schools served in these districts, raising the number of schools served in these districts from 269 to 357. About half (44 percent) of these would not have been eligible even under the weaker Chapter 1 targeting provisions. In 1997-98, the median school allocation in districts receiving these waivers was reduced by 26 percent, from $622 to $462.

• Waivers allowing school allocations below the 125 percent minimum also resulted in significant reductions in school allocations in these districts. In 1997-98, the median school allocation in districts receiving these waivers was reduced by 14 percent, from $380 to $326.

Use of the schoolwide option was increasing steadily in the early 1990s, but jumped dramatically after eligibility requirements were relaxed in the 1994 reauthorization.

• The percentage of Title I schools operating schoolwide programs increased from 3 percent in 1990-91 to 10 percent in 1994-95 (the last year before the new eligibility rules began to take effect) and 45 percent in 1997-98.

• As a percentage of Title I schools eligible to use the schoolwide approach, schoolwides rose from 24 percent of eligible schools in 1990-91 to 46 percent in 1994-95 and then to 73 percent in 1997-98 - even though the number of eligible schools doubled between 1994-95 and 1997-98 as a result of lowering the eligibility threshold.

Schoolwide programs now receive a larger share of Title I funds than do targeted assistance schools.

• Although schoolwide programs accounted for only 45 percent of all Title I schools in 1997-98, they received 60 percent of the funds because schoolwides receive larger Title I allocations, on average, than targeted assistance schools because they tend to have higher poverty rates than targeted assistance schools.

Schoolwide programs receive similar funding levels per low-income student as targeted assistance schools with the same poverty levels.

• Data from the 17 urban districts indicate that this represents a significant change from prior to the 1994 reauthorization, when schoolwide programs tended to receive larger allocations than targeted assistance schools. Prior to the reauthorization, some districts had an explicit policy of funding schoolwide programs at a higher level than targeted assistance schools, but this is no longer permissible due to the rank-order requirement that districts may not provide any school with a per-pupil allocation that is larger than the allocations provided to other schools in the district with higher poverty levels.

Across the 15 urban districts included in this analysis, funding for services to private school students declined by 10 percent from 1994-95 to 1996-97, while total Title I funding rose by 5 percent.

• Twelve of the districts had reductions in funding for private school students ranging from 6 percent to 56 percent, and three districts had increases ranging from 2 percent to 7 percent.

Some districts showed more substantial declines in allocations for private school students over this three-year period.

• In eight of the 15 districts, allocations declined by 39 to 56 percent over the three-year period from 1994-95 to 1996-97.

• The districts with very large reductions in these allocations tended to have relatively small allocations for private school students prior to reauthorization, compared with the districts that had increases or smaller decreases in these funds.

  • The eight districts with the largest reductions accounted for 10 percent of total allocations for private school students in the 15 urban districts in 1994-95 (and 23 percent of total Title I funds), while the five districts with increases or small reductions in these allocations accounted for 73 percent of total funds for private school students (and 58 percent of total Title I funds).

Title I differs from most other school district resources in that most of the funds are allocated to individual schools.

• Districts may use some Title I funds for district-wide programs and services in addition to allocating some of the funds to individual schools, and there is no limit on the amount districts can retain for centrally-administered programs.

Districts allocated three-fourths (75 percent) of their Title I funds to individual public schools in 1997-98, based on a national sample of school districts. Similarly, in the sample of large urban districts, 77 percent of the funds were allocated to individual public schools in 1996-97.

• Funds allocated for services for private school students accounted for an additional 1 percent of districts' Title I funds. This percentage was considerably higher in the sample of large urban districts (5 percent).

• Spending on districtwide programs and services accounted for 16 percent of districts' Title I funds. Adding together the funds used for allocations to individual public schools (75 percent), services for private school students (1 percent), and districtwide programs and services (16 percent) suggests that 92 percent of districts' Title I funds were used for instruction and instructional support. The remaining 8 percent were used for program administration.

Copies of this report are available by contacting the U.S. Department of Education's Publication Center in the following ways:

• Toll-free phone calls to 1-877-4ED-Pubs (1-877-433-7827), TTY/TDD call 1-877-576-7734. If 877 is not yet available in your area, call 1-800-USA-LEARN (1-800-872-5327), TTY/TDD call 1-800-437-0833
• via internet at http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html
• via e-mail at edpubs@inet.ed.gov
• via fax to 301-470-1244
• via mail to ED Pubs, Education Publications Center, U.S. Department of Education, P.O. Box 1398, Jessup, MD 20794-1398