Title I, Part A (Title I) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESEA) provides financial assistance to local educational agencies for children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards.

The majority of Title I funds are allocated at the district level in all states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, based on mathematical formulas involving the number of children eligible for Title I support and the state per pupil cost of education.1

Title I funds are currently allocated through four grants. While mathematical formulas for all four grants are fundamentally based on the count of formula-eligible children and several shared provisions, each grant has a unique, complex series of algorithms for determining allocations for that grant.

Basic Grants are the largest component of Title I funding ($6.4 billion in fiscal year 2015 [FY 15]). Concentration Grants, the smallest of the four grants ($1.3 billion in FY 15), are available to districts in which the number of formula-eligible children exceeds 6,500 or 15 percent of the district’s 5- to 17-year-old population. Targeted Grants ($3.3 billion in FY 15) are allocated to districts according to a student weighting system benefiting districts with high numbers or percentages of formula-eligible children.Education Finance Incentive Grants (EFIG) ($3.3 billion in FY 15) are allocated to states to provide districts with additional funding for low-income and disadvantaged children; the exact amount varies depending on measures of state effort and equity in funding public education.

The total Title I allocations per formula-eligible child varied among the 12 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) geographic locales, which were based on a district’s population and proximity to an urbanized area. The locales with the highest total Title I final allocations per formula-eligible child were the most densely and least densely populated areas: large cities ($1,466) and remote rural areas ($1,313). Districts in fringe rural areas ($1,070), fringe towns ($1,088), and small suburban areas ($1,102) had the lowest total Title I final allocations per formula-eligible child.