Why federal spending on disadvantaged students (Title I) doesn’t work
Executive Summary
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is being reauthorized. Its largest program, Title I, provides funding to states and districts to improve education for disadvantaged students. However, its funding per student is quite low, averaging about $500 to $600 a year. And there is little evidence that the overall program is effective or that its funds are used for effective services and activities. Large proportions of school principals report using Title I funds for teacher professional development, which many studies have shown to be ineffective and which teachers do not find valuable. Other services on which principals spent Title I funds include after-school and summer programs, technology purchases, and supplemental services, which also have been shown to be ineffective, and class-size reductions, which are unlikely to be of the size needed to generate effects found in previous research.
Achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and their better-off peers are large and have existed for decades. Narrowing these gaps will mean investing more in research to identify effective approaches, or increasing Title I spending by five to eight times more per student, or both. Focusing effective interventions on the neediest students may provide a way forward that is consistent with fiscal realities.
Efforts to reauthorize the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) have generated contentious debates about annual testing and accountability. Both the Senate and House versions, now headed to conference, maintain annual testing and push accountability back to the states.
Curiously missing from the debates has been the evidence of whether or not ESEA achieves its objectives.
The largest ESEA expenditure by far is for its Title I program, which in 2014 provided $14 billion to states to improve student achievement. But the last national evaluation that measured Title I’s effectiveness, the ‘Prospects’ study, did not find evidence that it improved student achievement.[i] The most recent national assessment of Title I did not measure its effectiveness, though it pointed to broad trends on the National Assessment of Educational Progress showing gains in achievement, especially for minority students. These gains may be due more to NCLB’s stricter accountability, however. Accountability created incentives for all public schools to improve.
The question here is whether Title I funds are spent effectively.
Follow the money
Title I has a 60-year history, which is plenty of time for it to develop funding quirks. Funds flow to districts based on their counts of students in poverty, which is determined by the Census Bureau. Districts determine which schools get funds by rank-ordering schools based on poverty levels. Once funds arrive at a school, however, they are used for students at risk of failing to meet state learning standards. A student’s poverty level plays no role in determining whether the student is eligible for Title 1 services. And if a school serves at least 40 percent economically disadvantaged students, funds can be used for the entire school (a ‘schoolwide’ program).
There is a well-known correlation between poverty and student achievement, and Title I no doubt serves students who are both poor and underperforming. But the school lunch program does not measure the calorie intake of low-income students and give their lunches away if low-income students are getting ‘enough’ calories. But that is how Title I treats a low-income student who is making satisfactory academic progress.
Title 1 is spread so thin that its budget of $14 billion a year turns out not to be much money.[ii]The threshold for operating a Title I schoolwide program is that 40 percent of a school’s students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, and current data show that 51 percent of students are eligible. Not surprisingly, many schools operate schoolwide programs, in fact about half of all public schools in the United States.[iii]
Assuming these schools have average enrollment, which is about 500 students, almost 25 million students attend schools that operate schoolwide programs. The upshot is that after allowing for the money also spent on ‘targeted-assistance’ programs (which operate in schools whose poverty levels are below 40 percent), Title I is spending about $500 to $600 per student. The national assessment of Title 1 used a survey of states, school districts, and schools to estimate Title I expenditures, and essentially reached the same conclusion. Their more exact estimate is that Title I spent $558 per student in a high-poverty school and, another spending quirk, spent $763 per student in a low-poverty school.[iv] Education spending was $12,400 a year per student in 2013, which means from the federal perspective, Title I amounts to about 5 percent more per student than would otherwise have been spent.[v]
Realistically, how much improvement can we expect by adding 5 percent to education spending? Data show huge achievement differences for students in poverty compared to those who are not. The National Assessment of Education Progress reported in 2015 that the average fourth grader eligible for free lunch scored 209 in reading, and the average fourth grader that was not eligible for free lunch scored 237. That 28-point gap is roughly comparable to being behind by more than two grade levels. The gap is 25 points in eighth grade, which is still very large.
Spending another $500 seems unlikely to close these kinds of gaps much or at all.
Maybe the funds can be focused on fewer students or spent on highly effective activities or services. But, by design, schoolwide programs do not target specific students. The programs are intended for the whole school, though schools might operate after-school programs or basic skills programs that benefit only those students that attend them. And the question of whether the money is spent effectively is preceded by a question that itself is hard to answer: how is the money spent?
What is purchased with Title I funds?
In 2010, the Government Accountability Office visited 12 school districts in four states to explore what happened to the money. The nation’s ‘watchdog’ agency could not simply check a database or spreadsheet to determine how Title I money was spent. They had to send investigators into the field. This is not a criticism of the GAO. There is no database they could have referenced, so they went to the field to learn what they could. They did note in their report that Education Department officials ‘want to allow schools to spend the money to meet their unique needs and to be free to spend the money creatively.’
The money might be spent creatively but what the GAO reported is not much cause for thinking the money is spent effectively.[vi] Most of the money—84 percent—is spent on ‘instruction,’ which is not surprising for a program that operates in schools. Some districts used funds for teacher professional development in the form of workshops or by hiring coaches to support regular classroom teachers, or funded smaller class sizes, provided after-school programs and summer-school programs, or bought technology hardware or software.
These findings are corroborated by recent data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study’s kindergarten cohort, which administered a survey to principals of schools that included a kindergarten. Principals were asked how they spent Title 1 funds. The survey did not ask dollar amounts or proportions, unfortunately. Principals checked off ways in which money was spent without indicating how much was spent. The table counts principals not receiving Title 1 funds as responding ‘no spending’ in each category.
The table shows that 81 percent of principals reported spending Title I money on professional development. The percent is higher—93 percent—in urban schools and in schools with high poverty rates (more than 75% free or reduced price lunch). How much is spent on professional development is hard to assess because the districts report spending in categories such as ‘instruction’ that includes teachers and teacher aides. If teachers hired through Title I are coaching other teachers, they are counted as teachers and not as Why federal spending on disadvantaged students (Title I) doesn’t work | Brookings Institution: