II. Detailed Discussion of Waivers Granted By Focus
Each of the following five subsections discusses the
categories of waivers granted and includes examples that highlight how
waivers support the goals and efforts of SEAs and LEAs.5
- Over two-fifths (42 percent) of all approved waivers relate to Title I targeting provisions. This type is the most common waiver granted since 1995. The use of targeting waivers, however, has declined over the years. In 1999, 18 targeting waivers were granted.
Compensatory Education Programs Office (CEP) administers programs that provide financial assistance to local and state education agencies to support services for at-risk and special needs children. The largest of these federally funded elementary and secondary education programs is Title I. Title I, Part A, of the ESEA focuses resources on schools serving economically disadvantaged children who are least likely to succeed academically. To determine how Title I resources are distributed in an LEA, Title I targeting requirements specify which schools within a district are eligible to receive Title I funds and how funds should be allocated among those schools.
| The Pennsylvania Department of Education received a Title I targeting waiver on behalf of Solanco School District in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This three-year waiver enables Solanco School District to continue to provide Title I services to Bart-Colerian Elementary School. Bart-Colerian has long been a Title I school, but due to yearly fluxes in the number of low-income students, the school fell out of eligibility for Title I services for two years. At the end of these two years, 15 percent of the school's educationally disadvantaged students were proficient or advanced in reading and 2 percent of these students were proficient or advanced in math. By May 1998, after one year of reinstated Title I services, 58 percent of educationally disadvantaged students scored at the proficient or advanced levels in both mathematics and reading. In 1998-99, 21 percent of its student body received Title I services. The school is only two percentage points below the districtwide low-income average |
The law focuses federal funds on schools with relatively high concentrations of poverty in order to help the most low-performing children meet challenging state academic content and student performance standards.6 In certain cases, however, these poverty-based approaches to targeting may not be the best way to meet the needs of all low-achieving students in a school district.7 For example, districts may want to allocate Title I funds to schools that are near eligibility and/or have fallen out of eligibility for Title I program funds. For these exceptions, school districts can request waivers. Requests for targeting waivers have decreased from 94 in the first year after reauthorization to 24 in 1999. With a decline in targeting waiver requests came a decrease in the number of targeting waivers being approved. The Department granted 18 waivers of Title I targeting provisions in 1999. This is less than half the number granted in previous years.
| Brookville Area School District in Brookville, Pennsylvania, received a waiver of the 125 percent rule so that it could continue to serve its K-2 students with a Title I program. The district renovated its elementary schools, with Northside Elementary housing only kindergarten and Pinecreek Elementary housing the first and second grades. Northside offers half-day kindergarten programs; consequently, students cannot participate in the free/reduced price meal program and parents do not register for this lunch program. As a result, Northside has fallen below the 35 percent poverty level. Without the waiver, an insufficient dollar amount would be allocated to these schools. Also, the district offers a kindergarten early intervention program and a six-week summer program, both of which would be compromised without the waiver. |
Since the reauthorization of the ESEA, four different requirements of the Title I targeting provision have been waived. However, in 1999, almost all (14 out of 18) of the targeting waivers granted related to one requirement that allows schools with percentages of children from low-income families just below the poverty thresholds for Title I eligibility to implement Title I programs.8 The remaining four waivers granted in 1999 permitted districts to designate less than the required per-pupil allocation to schools with less than 35 percent poverty or allowed districts to serve schools out of the required rank order of poverty.
The Title I legislation contains a specialized waiver authority in ESEA section 1113(a)(7) that permits the Secretary to waive within-district Title I targeting requirements for school districts under court-ordered or state-ordered desegregation plans. This waiver authority gives districts greater flexibility in the use of Title I funds to serve students who are transferred from Title I schools in their neighborhoods to other schools as a result of a mandated desegregation plan. To receive a waiver under this authority, a school district must demonstrate that the waiver would further the purposes of Title I. Furthermore, at least 25 percent of students in the affected schools must be from low-income families. While the Department has granted a total of 14 waivers under this authority since the reauthorization, one desegregation waiver was disapproved and no desegregation waivers were granted in 1999.
The Department disapproved three targeting waivers in 1999. These waivers were disapproved because the applicants did not sufficiently demonstrate that student needs were great enough to justify a transfer of Title I funds away from higher poverty schools or that student needs were being adequately addressed in Title I served schools to justify a transfer of Title I funds to lower poverty schools in the district.
| Clay County District Schools in Green Cove Springs, Florida, was granted a three- year waiver beginning in the 1998-99 school year to implement a schoolwide program at Wilkinson Elementary School even though, with 43 percent of the children from low-income families, the poverty rate at the school falls below the statutory threshold for implementing schoolwide programs. In planning for a schoolwide program, the school staff identified reading as an area of critical need for the students at Wilkinson. As a schoolwide program, Wilkinson Elementary School is using its combined federal, state, and local resources to implement Success for All, a researched-based reading program, and reduce class size for reading to an average of 16:1. |
| Madison Metropolitan School District in Wisconsin requested a waiver on behalf of Franklin Elementary School to implement a schoolwide program even though the percentage of students from low-income families in the school is less than 50 percent. The schoolwide committee's needs assessment highlighted reading/language arts as a critical area of need for student performance improvement. In response to the need, the schoolwide committee decided to develop a schoolwide program that would reduce class size dramatically and include instructional strategies that would help all students become accomplished readers. The schoolwide committee also felt that the largely minority students that qualified for Title I services at Franklin were not well served in segregated learning environments. Rather than removing children with special needs from the regular classroom, all children would benefit from a reorganization of school Title I, ESL, and other state and local resources. As a schoolwide program with smaller class sizes, Franklin Elementary School expects all students will benefit from: Reading Recovery strategies in smaller settings, additional reading time and class participation, better student assessment and more individualized instructional plans, and elimination of pull-out programs. As a schoolwide, the school will increase time in the schedule for collaborative teacher planning and focus mathematics instruction to helping all children, in smaller classroom settings, to meet state standards. The school has developed a set of clear and measurable goals for student achievement under the waiver as well as a detailed evaluation plan for its schoolwide program. |
In 1998, the Department disapproved four requests from schools to implement schoolwide programs. In those cases, the applicant either had not carried out sufficient planning or had developed a plan that appeared to focus solely on individual students rather than on improving curriculum or instructional programs for the entire school.
Footnotes:
[ 5 ] Appendix B provides a state-by-state
list of all waivers granted since the last report to Congress in September
1998. [ Return
to text ]
[ 6 ] These targeting provisions are in
section 1113 of the ESEA. [ Return
to text ]
[ 7 ] While the ESEA general waiver authority
does not permit waivers of requirements relating to the distribution of
funds to school districts, it does permit waivers affecting the
distribution of funds within a school district. [ Return
to text ]
[ 8 ] According to ESEA Section 1113(a)(2),
the poverty threshold for Title I eligibility refers to "the percentage of
children from low-income families" in an 'eligible school attendance area'
that "is at least as high as the percentage of children from low-income
families in the local educational agency as a whole." [ Return
to text ]
[ Overview of Waiver Requests... ]
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Last Updated -- May 4, 2000, (dtm)