The central objective of Title I, Part A is to ensure that all children reach challenging academic content standards, specifically in reading and math. The program provides supplemental resources to schools and students who have furthest to go in achieving these standards. In 2009-2010, CDE in collaboration with an external evaluation firm, OMNI Institute, studied the relationship between the amount of Title I funds distributed to schools and student performance. Title I per pupil allocation amounts were compared against the schools' median growth percentile, a metric that represents the academic growth of students on the state assessments in comparison to students' academic peers (students with similar performance histories on the state assessment). Although the study supported that on average schools with higher amounts of per pupil allocation tended to have higher median growth percentiles, there were also some schools with high growth percentiles with low per pupil amounts and vice versa (low growth schools with high per pupil allocations).
