Title I

No Child Left Behind, the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has been up for reauthorization since 2007. President Obama made education a central tenet of his recent State of the Union Address, encouraging Congress to reauthorize the law. And many education stakeholders have been speculating as to whether Congress will find enough common ground to pass a new bill this year. As Ed Week recently reported, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) has joined the choir of organizations pushing Congress to undertake reauthorization this year through a letter to Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Ranking Member Senator Michael Enzi (R-WY). Perhaps most importantly, the letter makes clear that states are not willing to wait much longer for a new version of ESEA to begin implementing new reforms.

The letter describes the state education chiefs’ dedication to implementing reforms like common standards, rigorous assessments, and better data systems; outlines priorities for ESEA reauthorization like better accountability systems, more flexibility, and higher quality teacher evaluation systems; and declares that absent reauthorization, states will begin to propose their own reform plans focused on college and career readiness, improving student outcomes, and supporting low-performing schools.

This last point is likely the most important statement in the letter. Prior to No Child Left Behind, few states had in place accountability systems linked to statewide tests, data systems that could track students over time, or methods for identifying chronically underperforming schools. The federal government had to legislate that states engage in these activities, making them a condition of receiving billions of dollars in Title I and other federal funding. Initially, many states grudgingly implemented these systems, decrying the lack of local control over schools and curricula and the increase in federal influence.

But nearly 10 years later, state officials are expressing their desire to implement advanced versions of these systems, even embracing the possibilities of collaboration across states. Though the state chiefs still want the ability to tailor accountability systems to their states’ needs and generally more flexibility than No Child Left Behind allows, a clearly important component of any education legislation, this letter represents a pretty dramatic shift from the past.

In fact, many of the ideas outlined in the letter reflect the priorities specified in the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition. Better standards and assessments, data use, and support for struggling schools are all mentioned explicitly in both Race to the Top and the CCSSO letter. Perhaps the Obama administration was on target in identifying these areas of focus. After all, Race to the Top led states to focus more deeply on these issues and assemble plans to address them.

What will this letter mean in the long run? Of course, just because CCSSO wrote a letter doesn’t mean it expresses the sentiments of every single state. Surely some states will choose not to offer new reform plans or will insist on dialing back some of the progress they have already made. And many of these types of reforms trigger divisive debates within states that may overshadow the dedication of their education chiefs. But it does suggest that the majority of states grasp the urgency of improving ESEA and those states are willing to take matters into their own hands to do so.

Now it is up to Congress to decide whether education truly will be the bi-partisan issue of 2011 or just another political powder keg.

Yesterday, the Washington Post published an op-ed by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In the op-ed, Secretary Duncan sets the stage for a potential bi-partisan reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act. Indeed, education is considered to be one of the few policy areas where Democrats and Republicans may find some points to agree on, though previous attempts at reauthorization have fizzled. The Obama administration has made its priorities for reauthorization somewhat clear, particularly through a document it released last March called the Blueprint for Education Reform. But what does Congress want for the new ESEA? A look at recently proposed education legislation in the House and Senate can give us a preliminary picture.

1. A new take on teacher comparability – a provision of ESEA that determines whether districts are equitably funding low-income schools.
In April of 2010, Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) introduced the ESEA Fiscal Fairness Act which would correct some of the major flaws in the existing teacher comparability provision of ESEA. The provision is supposed to ensure that school districts provide equitable state and local resources to both their high- and low-poverty schools, but loopholes exist. Currently, the provision allows districts to demonstrate comparability in several ways including providing evidence of a set teacher salary schedule or similar student-teacher ratios across schools. The Fattah bill would have changed the provision so that districts could only demonstrate comparability by showing that low- and high-income schools have similar state and local per pupil expenditures, including all salaries and non-personnel expenditures (except any additional funds spent on English language learner or special education instruction). Such a change would ensure that districts do not opt to use less rigorous methods to demonstrate comparability -- methods that misrepresent the amount of state and local funds Title I schools actually receive. The legislation would also mandate that districts include any staff salary variations due to years of experience, incentive pay, bonuses, and other compensation in their per pupil expenditure calculations for low- and high-income schools. The current rules allow districts to overlook such variation in teacher pay, perpetuating the uneven distribution of teachers where more experienced teachers tend to teach in higher-income schools.

Teacher comparability is a hot-button issue in education today. It often draws the ire of teachers’ unions because it threatens to upset the way teachers are currently compensated and assigned seniority. To make major improvements to the comparability provision in the law, legislators will have to tread carefully on these issues. For a full explanation of comparability, see here.

2. Less stringent models for the School Improvement Grant program.
In December of 2010, the Senate version of the Omnibus Appropriations Bill for fiscal year 2011 included language that would have overturned a requirement set by the Department of Education in late October to limit the number of schools that employ the transformation model for their school improvement efforts. The transformation model is considered the least intrusive of the four strategies for school improvement defined by the Department of Education and districts overwhelmingly selected this model in their applications for the funds.

In general, Congress has been less than thrilled with the Obama administration’s changes to the School Improvement Grant program, which have made the program stricter. Representative Judy Chu (D-CA) released a report describing how the program’s models do not provide schools enough flexibility to take students’ needs into consideration. Representative Glenn Thompson (R-PA) complained in a congressional hearing that the program represented federal intrusion in local control of education and did not have proper congressional oversight. And Senator Michael Enzi (R-WY) has expressed concern that the program is inappropriate for struggling rural schools. Given this vocal criticism of the program, it seems likely that Congress will limit the Obama administration’s influence over the School Improvement Grant program to ensure more flexibility.

3. A greater focus on increasing high school graduation rates.
The 111^th Congress submitted several pieces of legislation focused on improving high school graduation rates in the reauthorization of ESEA. These include the Graduation for All Act (Miller, D-CA), the Graduation Promise Act of 2009 (Hinojosa, D-TX and Bingaman, D-NM), the Turning Around Low-Performing Public High Schools Act (McCarthy, D-NY), the Fast Track to College Act of 2009 (Kildee, D-MI), and the Graduate for a Better Future Act (Burr, R-NC), among others. These bills mainly focus on providing grants for schools with low graduation rates to partner with local organizations or institutions of higher education to improve student achievement.

Currently, ESEA has a limited focus on the high school grades and improving student achievement in those grades. While students are currently tested in either 10^th or 11^th grade for NCLB accountability purposes, many districts choose not to give Title I funds to their high schools in favor of elementary and middle schools. The numerous bills submitted in the last congress that focus on high school suggest that the reauthorization of ESEA will likely include more programs directed at improving high school graduation rates.

Though it’s impossible to know exactly what Congress has in mind for ESEA, especially given the new Republican majority in the House, these recently proposed pieces of legislation give us some important insight. But many questions still remain:

Is there a future for Race to the Top and Investing in Innovation? What will become of the Early Learning Challenge Fund or other efforts to include early education in the law? And perhaps most importantly – Will the 112^th Congress get around to ESEA reauthorization at all?

At Ed Money Watch we have been tracking the expenditure of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) as closely as possible. Until now, the best source of information on this topic has been Department of Education accounting data that track the obligation and outlay of funds under each ARRA program. But this data only tells us when the ARRA funds leave the federal coffers and are disbursed to states. It doesn’t indicate when the school districts actually spend the funds.

Of course, there is also recipient reported data on ARRA spending which was mandated by the legislation. While these data do provide more information on expenditures at the district level, they lack the detail and reliability needed for in-depth analysis.

Today, however, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) released a new report that provides some new information on how districts have spent ARRA funds and what those funds have meant for school districts. The report, titled “Teaching Jobs Saved in 2009-10 But Teacher Layoffs Loom for Next School Year,” draws conclusions from a survey administered in the spring of 2010 to a nationally representative sample of 233 districts from 590 states. Luckily for us, the survey included questions about when districts expect to run out of ARRA funds, a question that we have thus far been unable to answer from the available sources.

The CEP survey found that 60 percent of school districts expected to spend all of the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF) monies they have already received by the end of the 2009-10 school year. The SFSF is a new program under the ARRA intended to help states stave off budget cuts. Given that the 2009-10 school year ended in June, this means that 60 percent of the nation’s school districts could have already spent all of their SFSF. However, this does not account for districts that have not yet received their full allocation of SFSF. For example, some states have yet to have their phase two SFSF applications approved by the Department of Education. Districts in these states are likely to receive another, though much smaller, allocation in the coming months, providing them additional funds for the 2010-11 school year.

In all, it’s not surprising that a good proportion of districts have used all of their SFSF monies, particularly those in states facing significant budget shortfalls like California. Ed Money Watch’s previous analyses of Department of Education data show that these states tend to outlay their SFSF monies more quickly than those states facing smaller shortfalls.

An additional 37 percent of surveyed districts said that they expect to use all of their SFSF monies by the end of school year 2010-11 and only 4 percent said they expected to use all their funds by the end of school year 2011-12. School districts must spend all of the SFSF monies by September 30, 2011, the day before fiscal year 2011 ends (though one month into the 2011-12 school year). However, any SFSF monies not obligated by the states by September 31, 2010 must be distributed to school districts through the Title I funding formula rather than through a state’s primary education funding formula.

The story for ARRA Title I and ARRA Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is somewhat different than for SFSF. Only 21 percent of districts reported that they would spend all their ARRA Title I funds by the end of the 2009-10 school year, and only 19 percent reported they would do so with their IDEA funds. In contrast, the vast majority of school districts, 71 and 70 percent, respectively, reported that they would spend all of their Title I and IDEA funds by the end of the 2010-11 school year. All of the ARRA Title I and IDEA funds have been available to states since the summer of 2009, meaning that school districts should have access to all of them now.

Again, it does not come as a great surprise that school districts would not use all of their Title I and IDEA ARRA funds until the end of next school year. Department of Education data also show that states have been slow to outlay these funds, perhaps because they have greater restrictions on how they can be used. Additionally, school districts had to spend their regular 2009 and 2010 Title I and IDEA appropriations in the same time frame as their ARRA allocations of those funds. This double duty could have further slowed the rate at which the funds were spent.

The CEP report confirms what we have suspected. Some school districts will soon be running out of SFSF monies, leaving them in a tight budget situation for the coming school years. However, these same districts do have ARRA Title I and IDEA funds remaining to help support specific programs targeted at low-income and special education students. While these funds can help fill a budget void, school districts will have to start making some difficult decisions, like cutting teaching staff or programs, to make ends meet. Absent further federal support, the coming school year is going to be an exercise in flexibility and creativity for these school districts.

In mid-March, the Obama Administration released its “Blueprint for Reform,” a lengthy document that outlined the President’s platform for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Yesterday, the Department of Education released a series of documents outlining the research that supports this Blueprint including a specific document on their plans for the future of standards and accountability under Title I. The research presented in the document demonstrates the shortcomings of the current No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law and how the Blueprint improves on these policies.

Some stakeholders and critics have complained that the Obama Administration’s ESEA Blueprint is not dramatically different from the current NCLB law or does not provide sufficient details to distinguish it from current law. In response, we created the table below that compares NCLB provisions to the Blueprint proposal. Now, you can decide whether the Obama Administration’s ideas for ESEA reauthorization represent a new era in federal education policy, are just more of the same, or don’t contain enough concrete detail either way.

For a printable PDF of this table, click here.

Picture an arborist puzzled by an ailing tree. He has tried giving it more water. He has protected it from blight. Why won't it grow?

If the tree stands for public education, the arborist is today's education reformer. Ideas continue to pour forth on how to help students, fix schools and revamp No Child Left Behind. But none tackles the environments the tree experienced as a sapling, when its roots never got the chance to stretch out and dig in.

When the Obama Administration released its Blueprint for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Ed Money Watch published a post bemoaning the lack of details about teacher comparability provided in the document. Teacher 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). We have long supported strengthening teacher comparability provisions, so we were glad to see that a bill recently proposed in the House seeks to dramatically change the current teacher comparability provisions for the better.

The bill introduced by Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) yesterday, called the ESEA Fiscal Fairness Act, corrects some of the major flaws in the existing teacher comparability law. These changes will better ensure 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.

School districts currently demonstrate that they are meeting the comparability requirements under Title I by comparing state and local resources (i.e. per pupil expenditures) provided to their low-income Title I schools and their higher-income non-Title I schools. To meet the comparability requirement, resources provided to the Title I schools cannot be more than 10 percent below those provided to non-Title I schools. The Fiscal Fairness Act would raise that bar to 3 percent, meaning that Title I schools must get at least 97% of the resources provided to non-Title I schools.

The bill would also restrict the way school districts define resources when demonstrating comparability. Currently, districts can compare total per pupil expenditures, per pupil staff salary expenditures, or student-instructional staff ratios between Title I and non-Title I schools. They can even present district-wide staff salary schedules as proof that they are meeting the comparability requirement.

Instead of these proxies for resource distribution between Title I and non-Title I schools, the Fiscal Fairness Act would limit the way districts can demonstrate comparability to total per pupil expenditures of state and local funds only, including all salaries and non-personnel expenditures (except any additional funds spent on English language learner or special education instruction). Such a change ensures that districts do not opt to use less rigorous methods to demonstrate comparability -- methods that misrepresent the amount of state and local funds Title I schools actually receive.

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, the proposed legislation would mandate that districts include any staff salary variations due to years of experience, incentive pay, bonuses, and other compensation in their per pupil expenditure calculations for Title I and non-Title I schools. The current rules allow districts to overlook such variation in teacher pay, perpetuating the uneven distribution of teachers. 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.

The Fiscal Fairness Act would require school districts to submit plans for how they intend to achieve the higher bar of comparability within three years. Because the bill also prohibits districts from forcefully transferring teachers to different schools, they will have to come up with innovative ways of redistributing expenditures among Title I and non-Title I schools. Such methods could include incentive pay programs to attract more experienced teachers to low-income schools, new compensation mechanisms that take into account other factors besides experience, or career ladder programs that provide opportunities for teachers to take on new roles and be compensated for them.

The teacher comparability requirements under Title I are currently flawed, reinforcing the unfair distribution of resources among Title I and non-Title I schools. Title I was initially intended to provide additional funds for services for low income students. But the severely weak teacher comparability provision has allowed many districts to use Title I funds to replace state and local funds where they are most needed. Congressman Fattah’s bill would achieve important changes to the teacher comparability provision that would help restore Title I to its original purpose. We hope it receives the support it needs in the House and Senate.

For more details about the teacher comparability provision and to read about our proposals to change the provision, see here.

Yesterday the Federal Education Budget Project (FEBP), Ed Money Watch’s parent initiative, released updates to its education funding, demographic, and achievement database (http://www.edmoneywatch.org). These new data include:

• District-level funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Part B, Title I Part A, and Impact Aid basic support payments, through 2009 with estimates for 2010;
• State-level funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Part B, Title I Part A, Impact Aid basic support payments, and federal school nutrition programs, through 2009 with estimates for 2010 and levels based on the President’s budget request for 2011.

FEBP is currently the only public source that provides these data all in one place and allows them to be analyzed along side student demographic and achievement data. In fact, the district level Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) data were collected directly from state departments of education because the federal government does not make data on district level IDEA allocations publicly available. The Impact Aid data were collected from the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools (NAFIS), and the Title I data were collected from Thompson Publishing.

These data provide an interesting window into the existing federal mechanisms for supporting public education, including services for low income students, special education students, and students that participate in school nutrition programs. FEBP’s comparison functions allow users to conduct comparisons of various indicators including funding across similar states and school districts.

Previous Ed Money Watch posts, under the “Examining the Data” series, use the FEBP comparison tool to explain idiosyncrasies in the existing funding formulas for each of these programs and provide context for the funds with student demographic. These same analyses can be recreated using data for other states and school districts. See the list below:

• Examining the Data: How the IDEA Funding Formula Fails to Target Funds to Students with Disabilities
• Examining the Data: Understanding Title I Funding Distributions
• Examining the Data: Assessing Poverty Through School Nutrition Funding and Participation

The Federal Education Budget Project aims to improve the quality of the education debate by making information on federal funding for education more accessible and transparent for the public, the media, and policymakers. We hope this new wave of data further illuminates the complex nature of the federal role in education funding and spurs conversations about improving federal funding formulas to better serve students and schools.

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.