Report: Unequal federal funding for poor students

Gwinnett County $38,078,991 $1,166

Atlanta $31,527,785 $1,491

Clayton County $23,200,200 $1,248

Cobb County $22,794,521 $1,179

Fulton County $22,024,922 $1,155

Source: U.S. News & World Report

More money from a federal program created to address education inequalities is going to the nation’s wealthier school districts, according to an analysis released Wednesday.

U.S. News & World Report examined funding from the federal government’s Title I program and found school districts with higher concentrations of poverty, and Southern states, are often shortchanged.

Gwinnett County received nearly as much Title I money this school year as DeKalb's school system, although the news outlet reported that DeKalb has about 3,000 more children in poverty and DeKalb's poverty rate is nearly twice as great as Gwinnett's. U.S. News used federal education department and Census Bureau data for its research and findings.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently explored how school systems at different ends of the economic ladder educate low-income students and found larger districts are getting increasingly higher percentages of state funds. Georgia saw a $5.6 million drop in Title I funding since the 2013-14 school year, officials said.

U.S. Education Department officials are trying to include regulations to the new education law passed in December that would require states to more equitably distribute their own funding among districts in order to receive Title I funding, U.S. News reported.

The Title I program was created in the 1960s.