Title I, Part A funds may be used for preschool education under some circumstances. This brochure provides an outline of the intersection of these two programs.
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).
Title II, Part A (IIA) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides funding for district-based initiatives designed to improve the quality of teaching and leadership in schools. Title IIA funds may be used for a vast array of activities including high-quality professional development, recruitment and retention of effective educators, helping teachers become highly qualified, and class size reduction. However, emerging research on the different allowable activities suggests that some strategies have more impact on educator effectiveness, and ultimately on student learning, than others.
