Title I- Education for the Disadvantaged

The 1965 amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, Title I, was intended was to improve the academic achievement of the disadvantaged. Title I is also referred to as "Education for the Disadvantaged–Grants to Local Educational Agencies". [1]

The purpose of Title I is to ensure that all children have a fair and equal chance to obtain an excellent education and reach, at the very least, proficiency on difficult state academic assessments and challenging State academic achievement standards.

Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education act sets the necessary provisions that a school must meet in order to qualify for federal funding. Schools with 40% of the student body categorized as low-income by the US government are eligible for Title I designation and assistance.[2]

Several solutions to any deviation of Title I include:

1) acknowledging that under-performing schools need resources just as much, if not more than high-performing schools.

2) significantly raising the quality of education by providing educators with ample opportunities for professional development.

3) holding States, schools, and local educational agencies accountable for the amelioration of all student's academic achievements, and recognizing and offering aid to under-performing schools that have failed to provide high-quality educations to their students. Title I also promotes providing alternatives to those students that attend these schools, allowing them to receive a high-quality education.

4) sealing the rift between high and low-performing students, specifically the achievement gaps between disadvantaged children and their more advantaged peers, as well as between minority and non-minority students.

5) meeting the educational needs of low-achieving children in our Nation's highest-poverty schools; ESL students, neglected or delinquent children, migratory students, children with disabilities, Indian children, and young children in need of reading assistance.

The primary targets of the provisions of Title I are the children of low-income families; especially neglected, rural, Native American, migrant, English language limited, and homeless families. The goal of the Elementary and Second education act is to provide for their long-term welfare and to ensure that they obtain a high-quality education.[3]

Title I has been active for more than 50 years. In the first 15 years of its existence, the program was reauthorized every three years to make sure that the funds were being allocated solely to students in need.

In 1988, the Hawkins-Stafford Elementary and Secondary School Improvement Act turned Title I's attention to cultivating school improvement and excellence programs. This act contained two new provisions: school-wide projects and program improvement. When students and schools who received funding were not improving, modifications called program improvement would recognize, assess and assist. The school wide projects allowed a larger number of high need schools to implement school wide programming by decreasing restrictive requirements that local funds had to match school wide funding by Title I.

The last major alteration to Title I before No Child Left Behind was in 1993; a National Assessment noted shortcomings of alterations made in the 1980s. These were a catalyst for the introduction of the 1994 Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA), which greatly altered the original ESEA.

Under NCLB, significant alterations were made to Title I. NCLB demanded increased accountability from its schools, from both teachers and students. Mandatory standardized tests were given to measure performance in schools compared to the achievement bars set by NCLB.