Secondary Education Act (Title I) : Washington Bureaucrats Fumble

It never fails to amaze me that we continue to believe the central government has the best ideas for everything that concerns our country instead of allowing the individual states to make the important decisions that effect them directly, especially something like education where everyone has a personal stake in the outcome.

It's clear enough to see the average parent couldn't possible have the needed smarts to make important decisions regarding how all that money is spent. It takes a lot of savvy to know this stuff and the Washington politicians are at the top of the food chain when it comes to making good decisions.

Issuing block grants to states and then let them do the allocation is nonsense.

But it doesn't take rocket science to figure out why the decisions for education come from afar, it's only about the power to control and that power is obtained by who controls the funding. Just think about how many different agencies that must have a say in this operation and how many hands have access to the $billions of dollars that are allocated.

No politician worth his salt is going to give up that access to the money and the power.

A Closer Look at the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
Source: Chad Miller: "Funding the Child: Analysis of Title I Portability," American Action Forum, April 2, 2015

April 8, 2015

As part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Title I aims to provide all students with an equitable education by providing financial assistance to high-poverty schools and school districts. Four different types of formula grants are used in this funding and school districts must demonstrate that the funds are used to supplement and not supplant services provided by the state and local agencies.
Title I grants include:

• Basic Grants provide funds to Local Education Agencies (LEAs) in which the number of children counted in the formula is at least 10 and exceeds 2 percent of an LEA's school-age population.
• Concentration Grants flow to LEAs where the number of formula children exceeds 6,500 or 15 percent of the total school-age population.
• Targeted Grants are based on the same data used for Basic and Concentration Grants except that the data are weighted so that LEAs with higher numbers or higher percentages of children from low-income families receive more funds.
• Education Finance Incentive Grants (EFIG) distribute funds to states based on factors that measure a state's effort to provide financial support for education compared to its relative wealth as measured by per capita income.

For the 2014 fiscal year, Title I, Part A was the single largest investment for K-12 education with an estimated $14.4 billion allocated. The funding goes through a long top-down process, which starts at the federal level, then to state education agencies, down to the school districts, and finally to schools.

Title I does not fund the low-income student directly. Instead, funding is directed towards schools with highest concentration of low-income students. Basing funding on highest concentration of low-income student has been demonstrated to not accurately measure poverty, particularly in high schools which tend to have larger student populations.