Elementary and Secondary Education Act


The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11, 1965. Part of Johnson's "war on poverty", the act has been one of the most far-reaching laws affecting education passed by the United States Congress, and was reauthorized by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Johnson proposed a major reform of federal education policy in the aftermath of his landslide victory in the 1964 United States presidential election, and his proposal quickly led to the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The act provides federal funding to primary and secondary education, with funds authorized for professional development, instructional materials, resources to support educational programs, and parental involvement promotion. The act emphasizes equal access to education, aiming to shorten the achievement gaps between students by providing federal funding to support schools with children from impoverished families.
Since 1965, ESEA has been modified and reauthorized by Congress several times. The Bilingual Education Act provides support for bilingual education and educational efforts for Native Americans and other groups. The Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 prohibits discrimination against students and teachers. The No Child Left Behind Act introduced a testing regime designed to promote standards-based education. The Every Student Succeeds Act retained some of the testing requirements established by the NCLB, but shifted accountability provisions to the states.

Historical context

President Lyndon B. Johnson, whose own ticket out of poverty was a public education in Texas, fervently believed that education was a cure for ignorance and poverty. Education funding in the 1960s was especially tight due to the demographic challenges posed by the large Baby Boomer generation, but Congress had repeatedly rejected increased federal financing for public schools. Buoyed by his landslide victory in the 1964 election, Johnson sought to dramatically increase federal funding for education at the start of his second term.
On January 25, 1965, President Johnson called for congressional efforts to improve education opportunities for America's children. Wary of popular fears regarding increased federal involvement in local schools, the Johnson administration advocated giving local districts great leeway to use the new funds, which were to be first distributed as grants to each state. Shortly thereafter, Carl D. Perkinsss, the chair of the General Education Subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor introduced H.R. 2362. With the Johnson administration's support, and after significant wrangling over the structure of the bill's funding formula committee, the full committee voted 23–8 to report it on March 2, 1965. Following a failed attempt to derail the bill by Representative Howard W. Smith, the House passed H.R. 2362 on March 26, 1965, in a 263–153 roll-call vote.
As the Senate prepared to consider the education bill, S. 370, Democratic leaders urged their colleagues to pass it without amendment, in hopes of avoiding the bill being returned to the House to endure further reconsideration. S. 370 was assigned to the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee, which subsequently reported the bill to the Senate floor with unanimous support. During the Senate debates, several amendments were introduced, though none passed. The Senate passed the bill in a 73–18 vote on April 7, 1965.
President Johnson signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into law two days later on April 9, 1965. For the first time, large amounts of federal money went to public schools. In practice ESEA meant helping all public school districts, with more money going to districts that had large proportions of students from poor families. Also for the first time, private schools received services, such as library funding, comprising about 12 percent of the ESEA budget. Though federal funds were involved, they were administered by local officials, and by 1977 it was reported that less than half of the funds were applied toward the education of children under the poverty line. Presidential biographer Robert Dallek further reports that researchers cited by Hugh Davis Graham soon found that poverty had more to do with family background and neighborhood conditions than the quantity of education a child received. Early studies suggested initial improvements for poor children helped by ESEA reading and math programs, but later assessments indicated that benefits faded quickly and left pupils little better off than those not in the schemes.

Sections of the original 1965 Act

  • Title I – Financial Assistance To Local Educational Agencies For The Education Of Children Of Low-Income Families
  • Title II – School Library Resources, Textbooks, and other Instructional Materials
  • Title III – Supplementary Educational Centers and Services
  • Title IV – Educational Research And Training
  • Title V – Grants To Strengthen State Departments Of Education
  • Title VI – General Provisions
New Titles Created by Early Amendments to 1965 Law
;1966 amendments
  • Title VI – Aid to Handicapped Children.
;1967 amendments
  • Title VII – Bilingual Education Programs.

    Title I

Overview

Title I, which is a provision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed in 1965, is a program created by the U.S. Department of Education to distribute funding to schools and school districts with a high percentage of students from low-income families, with the intention to create programs that will better aid children who have special needs that, without funding, could not be properly supported.
Funding is distributed first to state educational agencies which then allocate funds to local educational agencies which in turn dispense funds to public schools in need. Title I also helps children from families that have migrated to the United States and youth from intervention programs who are neglected or at risk of abuse. The act allocates money for educational purposes for the next five fiscal years until it is reauthorized. In addition, Title I appropriates money to the education system for the prosecution of high retention rates of students and the improvement of schools; these appropriations are carried out for five fiscal years until reauthorization. Funding for the Title I program could be facing substantial cuts as president Donald Trump’s plans take shape.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, to be an eligible Title I school, at least 40% of a school's students must be from low-income families who qualify under the U.S. Census' definition of low-income, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Title I mandates services both to eligible public school students and eligible private school students. This is outlined in section 1120 of Title I, Part A of the ESEA as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act. Title I states that it gives priority to schools that are in obvious need of funds, low-achieving schools, and schools that demonstrate a commitment to improving their education standards and test scores.
There are two types of assistance that can be provided by Title I funds. The first is a “schoolwide program” in which schools can dispense resources in a flexible manner. The second is a “targeted assistance program” which allows schools to identify students who are failing or at risk of failing.
Assistance for school improvement includes government grants, allocations, and reallocations based on the school's willingness to commit to improving their standing in the educational system. Each educational institution requesting these grants must submit an application that describes how these funds will be used in restructuring their school for academic improvement.
Schools receiving Title I funding are regulated by federal legislation. Most recently, this legislation includes the No Child Left Behind Act, which was passed in 2001.
In the 2006–2007 school year, Title I provided assistance to over 17 million students who range from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The majority of the funds were given to students between kindergarten through fifth grade. The next highest group that received funding were students in sixth through eighth grade. Finally, 16% of the funds went to students in high school, and 3% provided to students in preschool.

Historical context

In its original conception, Title I under the ESEA was designed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to close the skill gap in reading, writing, and mathematics between children from low-income households who attend urban or rural school systems and children from the middle-class who attend suburban school systems. This federal law came about during President Johnson's “war on poverty” agenda. Numerous studies have been conducted since the original authorization of the ESEA in 1965 that have shown that there is an inverse relationship between student achievement and school poverty. Specifically, student achievement has been found to decrease as school poverty increases. According to the United States Department of Education, students from low-income households are “three times as likely to be low achievers if they attend high-poverty schools as compared to low-poverty schools.” Within this context, Title I was conceived in order to compensate for the considerable educational deprivations associated with child poverty.
Changes over time
First 15 years
In the years following 1965, Title I has changed considerably. For the first 15 years, the program was reauthorized every three years with additional emphasis placed on how funds were to be allocated. In the course of these reauthorizations, strict federal rules and regulations have been created for the guarantee that funds would be allocated solely to students in need – specifically students eligible for services based on socioeconomic status and academic achievement.
Regulations also included added attention to uniformity in regards to how resources were distributed to Title I and non-Title I schools as well as the role of parents in the revisions of the program. In addition to more stringent rules, during these years, policy makers outlined punitive actions that could be taken for those who were out of compliance. Attention was also placed upon the assurance that Title I funds would not serve as replacements for local funds; but rather they would serve as subsidiary resources. These federal regulations, which were focused on financial resources, influenced local Title I programs in many ways. Pull-out programs were adopted by Title I schools in order to comply with the financial stipulations that were made in the initial reauthorizations. These programs separated eligible students from ineligible ones to ensure that those who were in-need would benefit from the program. By 1978, in response to the extensive criticism of pull-outs on the grounds that they were asynchronous with the instruction occurring in classrooms, another option for providing assistance to students was introduced, the school wide approach. Schools with a student body in which the make-up had 100% or more low-income students could use Title I funds for the entire school's improvement rather than for specific individuals. Despite this amendment, local fund requirements prevented all eligible students from using the school wide approach.