Education Department proposes new Title I grant program

The recommendation is in the department's report, Promising Results, Continuing Challenges: Final Report of the National Assessment of Title I, which also analyzes the impact of changes to the program when it was last reauthorized in 1994.

Title I, the largest federal education program, provides more than $8 billion a year to improve learning for students at risk of educational failure.

The department says the new targeted grants would help schools with the highest concentrations of poverty:

* support an effective, research-based schoolwide reform model;

* achieve within three years a 5-1 ratio of modern, multimedia computers to students;

* provide a high-quality after-school program; and

* reduce class sizes in the early grades to 21 students per teacher, which would be a step toward reaching a long-term ratio of 18-1.

According to the report, the targeted high-performance grants would raise the average amount of Title I funds that the highest-poverty schools receive annually by an estimated $336,000 per school, a 50 percent increase.

Money for the new grants would come from increases in Title I funding and also from "off-the-top set asides" from related federal programs, such as 21st Century Learning Communities, the Reading Excellence Act, and the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund.

"Targeting additional funds to schools with high concentrations of low-income students has advantages over targeting on low performance," the report says. "High-performing, high-poverty schools should not be penalized for their progress. Nor should low-performing schools be rewarded for a lack of effort."

The Education Department also recommends these other improvements to Title I:

* Paraprofessionals should no longer be used as teachers in Title I schools. Instead, they should be transferred to administrative functions or be assigned as parent liaisons. Career ladder programs should be set up for paraprofessionals to help them receive teaching credentials.

* "Consumer guides" should be developed, possibly by a new quasi-governmental agency, to help school officials select an effective comprehensive school reform model.

* Parent involvement should be strengthened by having schools report annually on "measurable indicators of the effectiveness of parent involvement as reflected in their own policies and compacts. Parent involvement provisions in all K-12 programs should be consolidated and coordinated.

* The federal government should help school districts and states provide more coherent, comparative information on school progress to their communities.

* Dual accountability systems should be eliminated. Title I and state-mandated accountability systems should be aligned with and be supportive of each other.

The Education Department's last major assessment of Title I, issued in 1993, recommended a new federal standards-driven approach linking federal funding with state and local reform efforts.

Congress adopted this approach five years ago, and Promising Results, Continuing Challenges says the change resulted in "positive gains in reading and math performance" among the nation's poorest and lowest-achieving students.

The report cites a NAEP study of 13 large urban school districts that found, in 10 of them, there were increases in the percentage of elementary students in the highest-poverty schools who met district or state proficiency standards in either reading or math.

The Education Department finds that the 1994 legislation resulted in more targeting of Title I funds to the highest-poverty schools. Ninety-five percent of the highest-poverty schools in the nation received Title I funds in 1997-98, up from 79 percent in 1993-94.

The report says "principals in high-performing, high-poverty schools are using standards to guide curriculum and instruction and using standards to assess student progress."

The number of schools with schoolwide Title I programs has grown rapidly, from 5,000 in 1995 to 16,000 today. Schoolwide programs are available to schools where low-income children make up at least 50 percent of enrollment. The report says "schoolwide programs are more likely to use a strategic plan and models of service delivery that can integrate Title I into the larger educational program."

Despite these signs of progress, the report also notes continuing challenges, such as the persistent performance gap between the highest-poverty schools and other schools.

And it cites a 1998 survey that found only one-third of teachers in schools with 60 percent or more poor children believe they are well-equipped to use standards in the classroom. A summary of the report is on the Education department's Web site.