An investigation by U.S. News later found that 20 percent of all Title I money for poor students – $2.6 billion – ends up in school districts with a higher proportion of wealthy families because those districts are frequently so much larger that they can have larger numbers of poor students than even districts where poverty is more pervasive but populations are smaller.
Changes to the formula were crucial, the Democrats and Republicans lobbied their respective caucuses, because the $16 billion Title I program was meant to financially bolster school districts with high concentrations of poor children so they have access to the same types of learning opportunities as wealthier children – children who often reside in more affluent districts and whose schools benefit from higher property taxes, among many other supports.
In short, the lawmakers said, the program is the pillar of the federal government’s involvement in K-12 education and they had a responsibility – both to disadvantaged students and to taxpayers – to get it right.
But changing funding formulas ultimately means some states and school districts lose money while others gain money and, as is the fate of so many congressional efforts to alter formulas, the proposal couldn’t overcome the opposition of those whose constituents would have lost money – even if the changes would have been more fair to the law’s original purpose of equalizing education funding across incomes.
What did make it into the bill that became law, however, was a little known mandate that the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics conduct an analysis of the funding mechanisms. Specifically, it tasked government officials with analyzing how each one of the four separate parts of the formula affect funding levels for various types of school districts, including large or small districts, those in poor or rich areas and those in urban or rural areas.