A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

(2) Waivers of ESEA Title I Targeting Provisions

• Targeting waivers are the most commonly granted type of waiver since the reauthorization of ESEA. Through September 30, 1998, 35 targeting waivers were granted. In most cases, districts that received waivers of Title I targeting provisions were lower poverty districts requesting waivers to serve ineligible schools that were close to the districtwide eligibility threshold.

Title I targeting requirements identify which schools within a district are eligible to receive Title I funds and how funds should be allocated among those schools. The law focuses federal funds on schools with relatively high concentrations of poverty, in order to help the most low-performing children meet challenging state academic content and student performance standards ^{[ 4 ]}. In certain cases, however, these approaches to targeting may not be the best way to meet the needs of low-achieving students in a school district. To accommodate exceptions, the Department has granted 32 waivers of Title I targeting provisions under the general waiver authority in ESEA section 14401,^{[ 5 ]} and 3 under the Title I desegregation waiver authority in 1998. Twenty-three of these were extensions of previously granted targeting waivers and 13 were new waivers. Most of these waivers involve schools that are just below the poverty thresholds for Title I eligibility or are at the margins of certain funding requirements.

Targeting Waivers Granted under section 14401 of the ESEA General Waiver Authority

The 32 Title I targeting waivers approved under the ESEA general waiver authority in 1998 were granted to:

• Districts wishing to provide Title I services at one or more schools that were ineligible for Title I funds, but had percentages of children from low-income families near the districtwide average and the same or a larger proportion of low-achieving children as did higher-poverty schools.

• Districts wishing to designate less than the required Title I per pupil allocation to schools with less than 35 percent poverty in order to provide needed services to other at-risk students.

• School districts with a small range of poverty rates across schools (generally less than 10 percent) that wish to serve schools out of rank order of poverty to meet identified needs of disadvantaged students.

• School districts where the students in certain schools have exceptional needs relative to students in other higher poverty schools in the district.

In Belle Vernon Area School District in Pennsylvania, an extension of a targeting waiver allows the district to continue to serve 9th and 10th grade students at the otherwise ineligible Belle Vernon High School, which falls below the districtwide average poverty rate. With a waiver, the high school is able to provide extra instruction in reading, an identified area of need in the school. By waiving the minimum per pupil allocation requirement, this waiver also allows the district to enhance the Title I reading program at Rostraver Middle School by directing additional funds to the school. With the waiver, Rostraver Middle School will serve more students with Title I services in reading. Even with the waiver to serve the middle and high schools, the Title I allocation at each of the three elementary schools served in the district is still over $800 per pupil.

Sixty percent of targeting waiver recipients in 1998 received waivers that allowed them to provide Title I services at schools with percentages of children from low-income families below the eligibility threshold. As a result of the waivers 32 otherwise ineligible schools received Title I services. The percentages of children from low-income families in these schools is, on average, about 4 percent below the districts' eligibility thresholds. The majority of the targeting waivers granted applied to cases where the range of poverty rates among schools in the district is 10 percent or less. In such cases, the schools within a district did not differ much from one another and tended to fluctuate in and out of Title I eligibility from year to year. For instance:

• With a waiver, School Administrative Unit #29 in Keene, New Hampshire provides Title I services to two otherwise ineligible elementary schools, Symonds and Jonathan Daniels elementary schools, which have poverty rates just 2 and 3 percent below the districtwide average eligibility threshold. The academic needs of students at Symonds and Jonathan Daniels are comparable to those of students in other schools in the district and serving them would not significantly alter the Title I allocations to the district's other eligible schools.

Title I requires school districts to fund schools in rank order, according to the percentages of children from low-income families at each school, so that per pupil allocations to higher poverty schools are at least as large as those to lower poverty schools. Eleven percent (4 waivers) of targeting waiver recipients in 1998 received waivers that allowed districts to allocate additional funds to lower poverty schools. All were extensions of previously granted waivers.

• A waiver of this allocation requirement allows the Meriwether County Board of Education in Georgia to provide comparable Title I dollars to two elementary schools that have very similar poverty rates to the district's other schools. With this waiver, Title I services will not be disrupted during the district's rebuilding effort that includes a reconfiguration of school attendance areas.

• The Juniata County School District in Pennsylvania, for example, used this waiver to provide Title I services to East Juniata High School in order to support reading and mathematics services for seventh and eighth graders.

An extension of a targeting waiver was granted in 1998 that allows Edgecombe County Schools in North Carolina to continue to operate early intervention programs at eight of its fourteen elementary schools. The waiver was required because, in order to distribute resources to address each school's needs, the allocations to the schools needed to be made out of rank order of school poverty. With this waiver, the district is able to allocate money based on the cost of a specific program design. Reading Recovery, a program for emergent readers, was funded at six elementary sites, HOSTS, a mentoring program was implemented at six sites, and three schools are operating Pre-K programs. The state's report on the progress of the district under the waiver reveals that all of the participating schools have made adequate yearly growth according to state standards.

If a district serves any schools with less than 35 percent of students from low-income families, the ESEA requires districts to provide Title I per pupil amounts at least 125 percent of the Title I per pupil allocation received by the district to each school served by Title I. (This is possible because each district's Title I allocation is based on a formula that counts all of the low-income children who live in the district, not just the children enrolled in the schools served.) Twenty-six percent of all targeting waiver recipients were granted waivers for this per pupil allocation requirement. This type of waiver is often requested in conjunction with requests for waivers to provide Title I services to otherwise ineligible schools.

Because the amount of resources the district receives in these cases does not change, when the money is more widely distributed, it results in a decrease in per pupil allocations to higher poverty schools.

The Department disapproved four targeting waivers in 1998. These waivers were disapproved because the applicants did not sufficiently demonstrate either that student needs were great enough to justify a transfer of Title I funds away from higher poverty schools or that student needs were being adequately addressed in Title I served schools to justify a transfer of Title I funds to lower poverty schools in the district.

Targeting Waivers Granted under the ESEA Title I Desegregation Waiver Authority

Desegregation targeting waivers allow funds to follow children from impoverished families when they change schools because of court-ordered or state-ordered desegregation plans.

San Diego City Schools received an extension of a targeting waiver granted under the desegregation authority that allows Title I funds in that district to serve disadvantaged students in schools that receive students as a part of a desegregation plan. The district estimates that almost 4,000 students will benefit from this program, "Follow the Child," during the 1998-99 school year. Standardized test scores from Title I schools indicate that student achievement improved over the duration of the original waiver.

The Title I legislation contains a specialized waiver authority in ESEA section 1113(a)(7) that permits the Secretary to waive within-district Title I targeting requirements for school districts under court-ordered or state-ordered desegregation plans. This waiver authority gives districts greater flexibility in using Title I funds to serve students who are transferred from Title I schools in their neighborhoods to other schools as a result of a mandated desegregation plan. To receive a waiver under this authority, at least 25 percent of students in the affected schools must be from low-income families and a school district must demonstrate that the waiver would further the purposes of Title I.

The Department has granted 14 waivers under the desegregation waiver authority in the ESEA, with just three of those occurring in 1998. The three waivers, to San Diego (CA) City Schools, White Plains (NY) School District, and Decatur Township (IN), are extensions of previously granted desegregation waivers.

Footnotes:

^{[ 4 ]} These targeting provisions are in section 1113 of the ESEA. [ Return to text ]

^{[ 5 ]} While the ESEA general waiver authority does not permit waivers of requirements relating to the distribution of funds to school districts, it does permit waivers affecting the distribution of funds within a school district. [ Return to text ]

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