Post by Moses on Jul 4, 2005 22:21:33 GMT -5
July 4, 2005
Federal Spending Increases, but More Schools Will Get Less Money for Low-Income Students
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
WASHINGTON, July 3 - A new analysis of federal money that public schools receive for low-income students shows that a record number of the nation's school districts will receive less in the coming academic year than they did for the one just ended.
For the 2005-2006 school year, spending under the Department of Education's Title I program, which helps low-achieving children in high-poverty areas, is increasing by 3.2 percent, to $12.6 billion.
But because of population shifts, growing numbers of poor children, newer census data and complex formulas that determine how the money is divided, more than two-thirds of the districts, or 8,843, will not receive as much financing as before.
The analysis, based on data from the department, was made by the Center on Education Policy, an advocacy group for public schools. A similar study by the group last year showed that 55 percent of the schools would receive less money than they did in the previous year.
"It's an alarming number," said Tom f*gan, a former department official who conducted the analysis. "It's clear that the amount of overall increase is not keeping pace with the number of poor kids."
Susan Aspey, a department spokeswoman, defended the spending levels for Title I, saying, "President Bush and Congress have invested record amounts of funding to help the nation's neediest students." [How truly evil to couch a 3.2 percent increase in such a way]
But Mr. f*gan said the increasing number of districts that are losing money is making it harder for the schools to meet the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush administration's signature education program, which measures progress through annual tests in math, reading and science. That is giving critics of the program more ammunition to accuse the administration of underfinancing the program while demanding greater results.
Title I provides the largest component of financing for No Child Left Behind.
"The federal government is concentrating more money in fewer districts," said John F. Jennings, the president and chief executive of the Center on Education Policy. "It means there is lots of anger and lots of tension. They're asking us to do more and more with less and less."
The law that created No Child Left Behind requires that money allocated for Title I above a 2001 baseline of $8.76 billion come from two grants that contain specific qualification requirements. One requirement is that a school district is eligible for an increase only if more than 5 percent of its children are from low-income families. Comparisons are based on 2002 census figures, which are the latest available.
The report states that "districts close to this minimum often move in and out of eligibility for these grants, losing and gaining relative large sums from one year to the next."
Many of the nation's largest metropolitan areas have no trouble in exceeding the standard, and as a result are getting significant increases for the coming year. Los Angeles leads the list, with an increase of $53.4 million, followed by Philadelphia ($29.3 million), Chicago ($20.5 million) and New York City ($18.1 million).
The increases are attributable in part to another characteristic of the grants: they use weighted formulas to determine allocations so that per-student spending is higher in high-poverty districts than it is in lower-poverty districts.
But Title I money for school districts in many smaller communities is more vulnerable to short-term shifts in population, including an influx of immigrants, middle-income families seeking more affordable housing and high-income families weary of big-city living.
That helps to explain why the Conejo Valley Unified School District, which includes bedroom communities about an hour's drive west of Los Angeles, will lose 37.6 percent of its Title I money from a year ago, the largest percentage drop of any school district in the country, according to the study.
Conejo Valley's decrease, $475,000, reflects an unintended consequence of spending formulas. The number of Title I students for the coming year will increase, to 3,050 from 3,000 last fall, Superintendent Robert Fraisse said. But because of an overall population increase in the area, the percentage of Title I students in district schools will fall to a projected 4.83 percent.
"We were shocked," Mr. Fraisse said. "Even though we will have more individual students eligible, the area has become less poverty-intense, so it doesn't matter the number of kids we have."
As a result, the district is eliminating some of the programs intended to help achieve the goals of No Child Left Behind, including remedial reading classes, summer school, the purchase of new software and family resource counselors, who serve in outreach programs to parents of children who do not speak English.
"We have a lot of enthusiasm toward educational reforms," Mr. Fraisse said. "But this has taken the wind out of our sails. Principals are worried. Teachers are worried. I am worried."
A similar fate awaits children in the San Diego school district, which led the list of districts that are losing Title I support in actual dollars, $4.1 million. Scott Patterson, the chief financial officer, said the district is losing up to 1.5 percent of its students a year because of population shifts.
Mr. Patterson said the district was likely to cut back many of the same programs that Conejo Valley is dropping, as well as an after-school program to help children in reading and math.
All Title I money is paid to the states, based on their number of poor children as measured against the national average, 6.04 percent for the coming year. The states distribute the money to their individual school districts. The analysis found that 41 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, would receive increases, led by Texas ($65.6 million), Pennsylvania ($45.1 million) and Florida ($33.1 million).
Leading the nine states that are losing money are New York ($15.2 million), Ohio ($13.3 million) and Oregon ($7.1 million). New York and Oregon are gaining poor children, but their totals are less than the national average. Ohio has fewer poor children than it did a year ago.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company