ED Delivers Final Report on Title I

ED Delivers Final Report on Title I: This week, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings sent Congress the final assessment of Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act. The report contains information about the program's implementation and impact and expands on an interim report released in April 2006. The report found that Title I funds go to 93 percent of the nation's school districts, with 74 percent of funds going to elementary schools. Most Title I funds were used for instruction, salaries, instructional materials and computers. In the area of student achievement, the report found that recent trends show gains for fourth-grade students in reading, mathematics and science, including minority students and students in high-poverty schools. Trends for middle and high school students were mixed. State assessments and NAEP both provided indications that achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and other students were narrowing. Title I served three times as many students in 2004-05 as it did a decade ago - 20 million, compared with 6.7 million in 1995. States identified 12 percent of all schools for improvement for 2005-06, and schools with high concentrations of poor and minority students were more likely to be identified than other schools, as were schools located in urban areas. The report also found that 75 percent of schools met AYP benchmarks and of those missing AYP, only a minority of cases missed only one AYP target. To view the full report visit: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20084012/index.asp