Recent RPM Articles
Some school districts get a lot more federal funding support than other districts to address the educational needs of very low-income students. Part of the reason is that the formulas used to distribute funding through Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act provide more funding per eligible student in large districts than in small districts.
But another problem is that the formulas provide more funding to districts in states that spend more on education and less funding to low-spending states.
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The Children’s Defense Fund, a leading child advocacy organization lead by the venerable Marian Wright Edelman, has written Democratic and Republican leaders of the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee calling for broad reforms of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (a.k.a. No Child Left Behind). First on its list of needed changes is the Title I formula.
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Small, high poverty cities like Rochester, New York, Edinburg, Texas, and Flint, Michigan, turn out to be the biggest victims — in sheer dollar amounts — of the "number weighting" scheme used in the Title I formula to boost funding levels for the very largest districts. And much of what they lose goes to low poverty suburban districts.
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Almost 800 of the 900 rural districts with the highest rates of student poverty actually lose federal funding intended to address the educational needs of disadvantaged students due to a provision in the formula that discriminates against small school districts. In 2008-09, this provision cost these "Rural 900" high-poverty districts $54.5 million.
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Imagine a formula for distributing public funds to schools that is supposed to send more money to schools with "high concentrations" of students living in poverty, but actually on average reduces funding to the highest poverty districts and increases it for all others, especially the very largest districts with the lowest poverty rates?
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When U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was in Hamlet, North Carolina last month, members of North Carolina Rural Education Working Group were there, too. They put some tough questions to the secretary and got some specific responses.
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The Rural Trust has recently identified the poorest rural and remote small town school districts. We have also conducted extensive analysis of the impact of changes to Title I formulas and demonstrated that federal funding has been systematically reallocated from high-poverty small and medium sized districts, including both rural and smaller city districts, to large urban districts, many with lower poverty rates.
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President Barack Obama is sending cabinet members in groups of two to five on a "Rural Tour" in July and August to discuss how communities, states, and the federal government can work together to strengthen rural America. It is not clear at this writing how these discussions will be structured — that is, who will be invited to talk and who will be responding.
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Federal funds to help local school districts meet the needs of disadvantaged children, primarily those who live in poverty, are distributed through four formulas established in Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind.
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Some $10 billion for schools in the federal stimulus package is being distributed through formulas that provide less funding per poor student to some school districts than others. Rubbing salt in that open sore is the fact that many of the districts that get less actually need more support for students because they have higher poverty rates—sometimes much higher—than districts that get more funding.
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