Federal funding intended to help schools educate poor children may not be reaching its intended targets, particularly in Georgia and other Southern states.
And although Georgia has one of the higher rates of child poverty nationally, state data show a $5.6 million drop between 2013-14 and 2015-16 from Title I, a federal program that gives extra money to schools with high percentages of low-income students.
Georgia receives less Title I money per student than many states with fewer poor children, according to a U.S. News & World Report investigative report released this week. About 25 percent of Georgia children live in poverty, according to Census estimates. But Georgia receives about $170 less Title I money per student than Virginia, for example, where about 15 percent of children live in poverty.
The formula used to distribute Title I money prioritizes the concentration of poor children — rather than the number —and allows districts to receive funding even if they serve small numbers of low-income students, U.S. News found. It also sends extra money to less populous states in an attempt to help rural states.
Most local districts have seen declines in their Title I funding in recent years. Schools often use that money to hire additional teachers and aides, get parents more involved at school and give students extra help with academics.
Atlanta Public Schools, for example, received about $30.6 million in Title I money in 2016, according to district officials, a drop of about 11 percent from two years earlier. That’s one of the largest decreases in the region.
Atlanta's funding decrease amounts to about $3.7 million, less than half a percent of the district's total budget for the upcoming school year.
Spread out across the district, that’s a decrease of about $40,000 at the school level.
It’s hard to pinpoint the impact of the decrease on schools, said Atlanta Title I director Kathleen Yarbrough. Schools can shift their spending plans from year to year as Title I allocations change.
“It’s always a concern when you have less funding,” she said. But “we try to be very proactive in letting them know” at the school level about funding changes.
Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett have also seen millions less in Title I allocations. In some cases, those losses have been cushioned by additional money from other federal programs.
The U.S. News analysis found that about 20 percent of Title I money is going to the nation's wealthier school districts and less is going to the South.
The method the federal government uses to distribute Title I money among states can lead to disparities.
Some organizations have complained that Title I funding has been woefully underfunded in recent years. A March report by the Hamilton Project, a Washington-based economic policy think tank, found Congress needed to allocate $50 billion in 2015 to fully fund Title I. Instead, the total was $14 billion for all 50 states.
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