State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act. Volume VI--Targeting and Uses of Federal Education Funds

Achieving the goals of federal education legislation depends on how federal funds are distributed and used. Since the enactment of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965, various federal programs have been created to support educational improvement and target additional resources to meet the educational needs of children who are economically and educationally disadvantaged. This report presents findings on the targeting and uses of funds for six federal education programs, based on 2004-05 data from the National Longitudinal Study of No Child Left Behind (NLS-NCLB). The programs studied are: Title I, Part A; Reading First; Comprehensive School Reform (CSR); Title II, Part A; Title III, Part A; and Perkins Vocational Education State Grants. This report describes how well federal funds are targeted to high-need districts and schools, how districts have spent federal funds, and the comparability of the base of state and local resources to which federal funds are added. Reported findings include: (1) Federal education funds were more strongly targeted to the highest-poverty districts than were state and local funds but did not close the funding gap between high- and low-poverty districts; (2) The overall share of Title I funds going to the highest-poverty districts changed only marginally between 1997-98 and 2004-05; (3) At the school level, Title I funding per low-income student in the highest-poverty schools remained unchanged from 1997-98 to 2004-05, when adjusted for inflation, and these schools continued to receive smaller Title I allocations per low-income student than did the lowest-poverty schools; (4) Federal program funds were used mainly for instruction; (5) Among the six federal programs, Title I provided the most funds used for professional development; and (6) Overall, school personnel expenditures from Title I amounted to $408 per low-income student, a 9 percent increase over the base of state and local per-student expenditures on school personnel. The report concludes that, while federal funds have been an important source of support to the highest-poverty districts and schools, and the majority of funds from the six federal programs studied have been used for instruction, neither these programs nor all federal programs combined have provided sufficient funding to make up for the greater access to local revenues available in the lowest-poverty districts compared with the highest-poverty districts in the United States. Four ap