Advocates Say NCLB’s ‘Comparability’ Provision is in Need of Fine-Tuning

Check the full report "Ensuring Equal Opportunity in Public Education How Local School District Funding Practices Hurt Disadvantaged Students and What Federal Policy Can Do About It" that includes the section "What If We Closed the Title I Comparability Loophole?" cited here by Roza.

-Patricia

By David J. Hoff | Ed Week

Washington-
When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, it rewrote much of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, increasing the amount of testing required and demanding that states hold schools accountable for results on those tests.

Although the changes were intended to hold school officials accountable for the educational experiences of disadvantaged children, Congress left intact a short clause in the main K-12 education law that, in practice, has failed to ensure that money from the federal Title I program only supplements state and local money, researchers and advocates said at a conference here last week.

“Title I is not having its intended effect,” Marguerite Roza, a research associate professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, said at the one-day conference sponsored by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. “It’s filling in the holes left by state and local funds.”

Differences in School Spending

Researchers looking at a sample of California school districts have documented that the districts spend more on teacher salaries and other expenditures in low-poverty schools than in high-poverty schools.



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