Program design and implementation overview

Oldest and Largest Federal Aid Program to Schools

Department of Education Web site, the headline above Title 1 reads: "Improving the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged." Further into the government's description of Title 1 - the largest and oldest federal aid program for elementary and secondary schools - readers learn that it exists in order "...to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging State academic achievement standards and state academic assessments." Those are laudable, lofty, idealistic and thoroughly worthy goals. But numerous questions arise in the mind of an objective Title 1 researcher, such as: 1) what is the most effective way in which Title 1 funds may be used? 2) what do teachers envision when they project Title 1 impacts five years from now? 3) Do the Title 1 resources truly make a substantial difference in a child's success?

History of Title 1

Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965; and the most significant, substantial and best-known portion of the legislation was Title 1 - which provided money to assist poorly performing students in "disadvantaged" schools. One drawback of the original legislation was that Title 1 funds could not be co-mingled with any other grants or funding sources a school receives. That ESEA restriction was eased in 1988, as Congress reauthorized the bill (re-naming Title 1 "Chapter 1"), which at that time allowed schools with at least 75% of the student body below the poverty line to use the funds to create school-wide programs. The advantage of this measure was that funded programs could be integrated into a school, and all low-income children, not just "at risk" or "low-achieving" students, would benefit.

And then, in 1994, the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA) changed Chapter 1 back to Title 1, and built more flexibility into the program. The "new" Title 1 now called for accountability, and shifted the focus from low-income and poorly achieving students to students from all economic backgrounds. The IASA Title 1 also offered funding for programs featuring students with high academic potential - a very new innovation.

Meanwhile, the very latest version of Title 1 came off the drawing boards as part of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, in 2001, a product of the George W. Bush Administration and members of Congress who jointly were participants in its creation. The NCLB, incidentally, has set highly robust goals (for all its programs, including Title 1) that some educators and politicians say are unachievable; indeed, a number of states have begun to "lower the passing grades on the standardized tests" that the new law mandates. In fact, several U.S. Senators are initiating a bill which would allow states to obtain a "waiver" to escape the strict requirements. After all: if stringent rules are not met with regard to student achievement in math and English/language arts by a target date, schools can lose federal aid, and/or be taken over for "restructuring." Notwithstanding the outcome of attempts to obtain waivers, the ideal Title 1 program under NCLB should be school-wide, funded from multiple sources, and should prepare students to meet challenging new state standards.

NCLB (Title 1) Rhetoric VS Reality - Is the White House really committed?

Just as good nutrition powers the brains of students, money makes Title 1 programs work. And in order for schools to meet the stiff new challenges, billions of dollars are flowing from Washington D.C. To school districts in the 50 states; hence, it's pertinent to examine funding while also exploring the potential success and failure rates of Title 1. In that context, it's clear that the Bush budgets (both for fiscal year 2003 and fiscal year 2004) have not shown the same commitment to Title 1 NCLB that Bush's rhetoric led the nation to believe they would, in 2002, when the bill became law in very public "photo opportunities" and "sound bites." Indeed, a little more than a year after Bush stood side-by-side on the White House lawn, with long-time education advocate, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Kennedy was sharply criticizing the budget submitted by the president. Kennedy said (in 2002) that the $1.4 billion increase for all education programs is the "smallest increase in seven years" (Techniques, 2002), and would actually cut $90 million from elementary and secondary school programs covered by the NCLB. Not only did Kennedy express concern that the budget fails to meet the commitments pledged by Bush, he noted that Bush's budget proposes 50 times more on tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans than for new education spending. "If we fail to provide greater resources," Kennedy said, "we will send a very discouraging message [to schools] about the importance of these reforms and severely diminish their chances of success. I believe a $10 billion increase for education over last year is called for to implement the school reform."

Meanwhile, if the administration's budget request for fiscal 2004 is enacted, federal education funding would rise to $53.1 billion, the highest level in history and "an increase of nearly $11 billion since I took office," Bush said in June, 2003. (Cardman, 2003).

Meanwhile, however, Tom Houlihan, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), rebutted Bush's remarks: "With the worst state budget deficits in 40 years, states cannot be expected to fully implement this law without the resources that they were promised by the Congress and administration when the bill was signed into law," said Houlihan.

Title 1 Success Stories

1) Berkeley County School District, South Carolina

In South Carolina, the Berkeley County School District (BCSD) has utilized the reauthorization of Title 1 to greatly enhance their service to students (Etheridge, 2001), according to a case study. The BCSD has 34 schools, and of those 16 are elementary, 3 intermediate, 9 middle and 6 are high school level - with a combined enrollment of 26,000 students. The Title 1 program includes 21 program sites (11 elementary, 2 intermediate, 6 middle and 2 high schools) which serve more than 12,000 pupils; of those children, 90% fall under the poverty line. An average of $3.5 million per year has been allocated from Title 1 funding.

As to the ethnicity of the Title 1 targeted students in the BCSD, 62% were white, 34.6% African-American, and 3.4% from other ethnic groups. In the second full year (1998) following the implementation of Title 1 resources (1996), the percentage of low-income students 4th graders who scored below the 25th percentile (Q1) was reduced (in reading skills) from 41.1% to 36.8%, and in math skills, from 36.1% to 30.3% (Etheridge, 2001). Another positive indicator was the slow but sure rise in the number of students who scored above the "national average" in reading and math; interestingly, all student groups in the BCSD showed improvement in that category except non-Title 1 students in 7th grade. To wit, students in 4th grade under Title 1 went from 32.2% above the national average in reading to 34.6%; in math, the Title 1 fourth graders jumped from 40.5% above the national average to 46.5%. And for the BDSD 7th graders under Title 1, they rose (in math) from only 32.9% being above the national average, to 42.6% above the national average. That's a pretty hefty leap, if you believe testing numbers truly reflect performance and achievement. (More on testing a bit later in the paper).

As to the reasons why BCSD has enhanced the learning abilities of its Title 1 participants, the case study (Etheridge, 2001) lists "Ten Conclusions From 'Growth Through Review'" - beginning with the statement that "The key to any academic intervention is the teacher." This of course is not a startling revelation, but as multiple school districts have discovered, teachers need additional resources when they're required to complete additional tasks. Those resources include teacher training, updated materials (including digital technologies), and incentives. The remaining "Ten Conclusions," which could easily apply to any school using federal tax dollars through Title 1, include: staff development; early learning / parenting; effective school leadership; good district administrative planning for long-range objectives; receptivity to change by school leadership at all levels; creative academic interventions; sensible seeking of outside resources; stakeholder inclusion (parents, community, students); and "Divine guidance (prayer and seeking of spiritual values)" (Etheridge, 2001).

2) "Literacy Booster Groups" and "Reading Recovery" (Title 1 Innovation)

The writer (MacKenzie, 2001) who researched Title 1 accomplishments at Landon Elementary, while not trying to be secretive, likely agreed not to identify the precise location of this school (for security reasons); all the person who reads the Reading Teacher research article knows is that Landon is "a neighborhood school located in a lower middle-income community adjacent to a larger urban area in the Midwestern U.S." [Editor's note: Landon Elementary is not to be confused with the Landon School for boys outside Washington, D.C.]

The Title 1 program at Landon Elementary (LE), serving 400 students, has been operating for over ten years. Teachers work with students from kindergarten through 3rd grade, utilizing "Literacy Teams" and small-group dynamics - instruction which is offered in addition to regular classroom literacy instruction. Literacy Teams meet three times a week for half an hour, during which time 3 to 5 adults instruct large and small groups, outside the traditional classroom. Assessment of student achievement is based on actual student reading growth, not standardized testing.

For the lowest achieving students in first grade, for example, a program has been established called "Reading Recovery." Teachers trained in the Literacy Team skills work individually with four 1st grade students who are struggling with reading. Once students are "functioning independently at an average first-grade level" (MacKenzie, 2001) they are released from Reading Recovery (RR) - a process that takes 12 to 20 weeks, on average. To be released from RR, students "must show that they control directional movement over text without lapse." They also "must control one-to-one matching of spoken to written word" in order to check responses, and need to notice "discrepancies by cross-checking one cue source (e.g., meaning) against another (e.g., structural or visual) and be quite adept at using a combination of these cue sources at the point of error." Meantime, "Literacy Booster Groups" - of up to 8 first and second grade students - meet weekly for 30 to 45 minutes. These students are "graduates" of RR groups and use the weekly sessions to "boost" and reinforce their skills in reading. Two literacy teachers lead the sessions: as one teacher meets with each student on an individual basis - to discuss journal entries - the other teacher assists the remaining students with "appropriate book selections."

Every student "continuously maintains 4 books in a take-home book bag, two familiar books from the previous week, and two new books chosen during the lesson." All this takes place in the "Literacy Lodge," and those students who are not meeting with teachers are involved in independent reading, or writing, within the lodge. Once all students have had their one-on-one, and have selected their new books for their take-home bag, a mini-lesson is given on reading and writing.

Clearly, Landon Elementary has used Title 1 funding not just to supplement existing programs, but to establish and build upon an impressive, ongoing, dynamic approach to literacy. As their evaluation - employing the Full Observation Survey and Burns and Roe Informal Reading Inventory - shows, teachers at Landon have achieved laudable gains in literacy. For example, over three years (1998-2000), 43-59% of all first graders met "grade level expectations at the beginning of the year; and by the end of each year, it was 98-100% for "all students" and 78-94% for Booster Group students. For each of the three years, the rate of student progress for all students (in literacy) increased between 41-55%, while the rate of Booster Group students increased between 78-81%. For 1st graders during the first 3-year period prior to Literacy Booster Groups, students increased an average of 2.6 text levels from the end of their RR program to the time of spring testing. But in the last 3 years during which students participated in Literacy Booster Groups, the average 1st grader text-level increase has been 3.4 text levels.

On the issue of self-correction rates (e.g., a self-correction rate of 1:5 means that for every 5 errors made, the child fixed one; an "adequate" rate would be 1:5), Title 1 literacy teachers recorded dramatic gains at Landon. The average self-correcting rate after 3 years of Literacy Booster Group lessons - for 1st grade students who complete the RR program - was 1:3.5.

The bottom line, according to an essay-style survey of literacy teachers at Landon, is that "Students who were once functioning at the bottom of their class are now becoming lifelong learners and lovers of literacy" (MacKenzie, 2001).

3) Title 1 utilizes computer technology

In reading / language arts classes at Marshall Elementary School, in Lewisburg, Tennessee, 1st and 2nd graders employ the use of 12 Macintosh computers, a large-screen TV, a VCR, two scanners, a CD-Recordable drive, a QuickTake digital camera, ISDN Web access on all computers and Connectix QuickCam video cameras (Holzberg, 1997). Teacher Hazel Jobe says, "I work with children who are slightly below grade level, to improve their reading and language skills. We don't teach these subjects as a remedial course. We take it a little slower and do...things...that we do with students who aren't below grade level." Those "things" include having students type in their own stories on the Mac; they bring a picture (which is scanned) to go with their story, or find it on the Web. Then they use a microphone to read aloud and record what they have written. Beyond creating stories, Jobe's students have been emailing back and forth with other students around the globe - and as of the writing of the article, they had communicated with kids in 21 countries and 20 states. They log onto International E-mail Classroom Connections (www.stolaf.edu/network/iecc/),or Classroom Connect (www.classroom.net/)and Jobe remarks: "When they get to class, they can't wait to find out who we had heard from that day...students learned a little geography [too] because they had to locate these places."