AERA Rural Education SIG: Notes from the Rural Trust's Recent Webinar

Friday, March 28, 2008

Notes from the Rural Trust's Recent Webinar

The focus of this webinar conducted by the Rural School and Community Trust on March 26 was the impact of weighted grants, targeted and Education Finance Incentive (EFIG), on Title I funding for rural districts. The primary effect of these weighted grants is to shift Title I funding from small rural districts to large urban districts.

Targeted and EFIG grants were not funded until 2002; however, more than one-third of Title I funds are provided to districts through these two grants. All new Title I money since 2002 has gone to these two weighted grants; this is expected to continue indefinitely.

Two weighting systems are intended to send more money to districts with high concentrations of eligible students:

Percentage Weighting: Based on the percentage of students in a district who are Title I eligible.
Number Weighting: Based on the number of Title I students in a district.

Whichever method results in the greater formula student count for a district determines its student count in the formula. With number weighting, students in big districts count more. This systematic bias in the Title I formula ends up favoring a few very large districts over all smaller ones by artificially inflating their formula student count.

According to the Rural Trust, districts that gain the most are those with moderate Title I eligibility rates, and those with high absolute numbers of formula students
Districts that lose the most are moderate sized urban districts with high eligibility rates, and small and moderate sized districts. About 8,000 small districts lose 15% or more.

You can examine how the Title I number weighting options affects a specific district by using the Congressional Research Service analysis available on the Rural School and Community Trust Website: http://www.ruraledu.org/site/c.beJMIZOCIrH/b.3782113/. Click on “Access the Information” at the bottom of the page, which will bring up a large table of all districts. Use Control + F to bring up a “Find” box and insert a district name.

The Rural Trust made the following recommendations:

Eliminate number weighting option.
Eliminate number weighting option, but hold losers harmless.
Eliminate number weighting option, but hold high-poverty districts harmless.
Limit eligibility for number weighting to districts with a high eligibility rate.
Reduce the weights used in the number weighting scale, especially in higher brackets.
Some combination of the above.

Title I Reauthorization Update:
Congress will use different scenarios and run the figures to see the effect of funding formulas. However, most of Congress is unaware of the 4 types of Title I grants/formulas. Both the House and Senate are looking at the Title I formula and are expected to address this issue before reauthorization. Hopefully, amendments will help rural school districts.

(Many thanks to my colleague Dee Braley, a Content Specialist in special education for the Appalachia Regional Comprehensive Center, for sharing her notes from the webinar!)

Tags: AERA, small schools, rural, education