As Congress Rewrites NCLB, Arne Duncan Highlights 'Title I Comparability Loophole'
Can a rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act close the so-called "Title I comparability loophole"?
Short answer: It's politically a really tough sell. But it looks like U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is going to try anyway. He is doing a press call later today with Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League, to highlight how the comparability loophole impacts poor and minority kids.
Long answer: First off, what exactly is the Title I comparability loophole?
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, of which the NCLB law is the most current edition, requires that states and districts ensure they are providing "comparable" (essentially the same) level of services to both Title I schools (which serve disadvantaged students) and wealthier schools using their own state and local money, before they can tap federal Title I funding (which is supposed to be extra money aimed at the poorest students.)
The "loophole" part? When it comes to the biggest expenditure (teachers' salaries), states and districts have some wiggle room. As long as all the schools in a district are on the same salary schedule—which usually means that teachers with the same level of experience and education get the same wages—and as long as the high-poverty schools have the same proprotion of teachers as the low-poverty schools, then the staffs are considered "comparable." That's true even if a high poverty Title I school has a high number of lower-paid, novice teachers, and a wealthier school that doesn't qualify for Title I has a high percentage of experienced educators who make significantly more money. And there are other problems with ESEA's comparability provision, civil rights advocates say.
About 4.5 million students attend inequitably funded Title I schools, according to a report on the loophole produced by the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, earlier this week. And those schools get about $1,200 less per student, on average, than wealthier schools in their districts, CAP found.
So what's the most recent pitch? Duncan and Morial will highlight U.S. Department of Education data from the 2011-12 school year that shows which states are shortchanging poor and minority kids the most. (More on what this state level data has to do with the comparability loophole below.)
So which states have the biggest disparities? They include Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The biggest offender on that list is Pennsylvania, where high-poverty districts spend 33 percenAs Congress Rewrites NCLB, Arne Duncan Highlights 'Title I Comparability Loophole' - Politics K-12 - Education Week: