Education & Workforce
day one project

Using Title 1 to Unlock Equity-Focused Innovation for Students

11.19.24 | 9 min read | Text by Shannon Murtagh

Congress should approve a new allowable use of Title I spending that specifically enables and encourages school districts to use funds for activities that support and drive equity-focused innovation. The persistent equity gap between wealthy and poor students in our country, and the continuing challenges caused by the pandemic, demand new, more effective strategies to help the students who are most underserved by our public education system.

Efforts focused on the distribution of all education funding, and Title I in particular, have focused on ensuring that funds flow to students and districts with the highest need. Given the persistence of achievement and opportunity gaps across race, class, and socioeconomic status, there is still work to be done on this front. Further, rapidly developing technologies such as artificial intelligence and immersive technologies are opening up new possibilities for students and teachers. However, these solutions are not enough. Realizing the full potential of funding streams and emerging technologies to transform student outcomes requires new solutions designed alongside the communities they are intended to serve. 

To finally close the equity gap, districts must invest in developing, evaluating, and implementing new solutions to meet the needs of students and families today and in a rapidly changing future. Using Title I funding to create a continuous, improvement-oriented research and development (R&D) infrastructure supporting innovations at scale will generate the systemic changes needed to reach the students in highest need of new, creative, and more effective solutions to support their learning. 

Challenge and Opportunity

Billions of dollars of federal funding have been distributed to school districts since the authorization of Title I federal funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), introduced in 1965 (later reauthorized under the Every Student Succeeds Act [ESSA]). In 2023 alone, Congress approved $18.4 billion in Title I funding. This funding is designed to provide targeted resources to school districts to ensure that students from low-income families can meet rigorous academic standards and have access to post-secondary opportunities. ESEA was authorized during the height of the Civil Rights Movement with the intent of addressing the two primary goals of (1) ensuring traditionally disadvantaged students were better served in an effort to create more equitable public education, and (2) addressing the funding disparities created by differences in local property taxes, the predominant source of education funding in most districts. These dual purposes were ultimately aimed at ensuring that a student’s zip code did not define their destiny.

The passing of ESEA was a watershed moment. Prior to its authorization, education policy was left mostly up to states and localities. In authorizing ESEA, the federal government launched ongoing involvement in public education and initiated a focus on principles of equity in education.

Further, research shows that school spending matters: Increased funding has been found to be associated with higher levels of student achievement. However, despite the increased spending for students from low-income families via Title I, the literature on outcomes of Title 1 funding is mixed. The limited impact of Title I funds on outcomes may be a result of municipalities using Title I funding to supplant or fill gaps in their overall funding and programs, instead of being used as an additive funding stream meant to equalize funding between poorer and richer districts. Additionally, while a taxonomy of options is provided to bring rigor and research to how districts use Title funding, the narrow set of options has not yielded the intended outcomes at scale. For instance, studies have repeatedly shown that school turnaround efforts have proven particularly stubborn and not shown the hoped-for outcomes.

The equity gap that ESEA was created to address has not been erased. There is still a persistent achievement gap between high- and low-income students in the nation. The emergence of COVID in 2020 uprooted the public education system, and its impact on student learning, as measured by test scores, is profound. Students lost ground across all focus areas and grades. Now, in the post-pandemic era, students have continued to lose ground. The “COVID Generation” of students are behind where they should be, and many are disengaged or questioning the value of their public education. Chronic absenteeism is increasing across all grades, races, and incomes. These challenges create an imperative for schools and districts to deepen their understanding of the interests and needs of students and families. The quick technological advancements in the education market are changing what is possible and available to students, while also raising important questions around ethics, student agency, and equitable access to technology. It is a moment of immense potential in public education. 

Title I funds are a key mechanism to addressing the array of challenges in education ranging from equity to fast-paced advancements in technology transforming the field. In its current form, Title I allocation occurs via four distribution criteria. The majority of funding is allocated via basic grants that are determined entirely on individual student income eligibility. The other three criteria allocate funding based on the concentration of student financial need within a district. Those looking to rethink allocation often argue for considering impact per dollar allocated, beyond solely need as a qualifying indicator for funding, essentially taking into account cost of living and services in an area to understand how far additional funding will stretch in order to more accurately equalize funding. It is essential that Title I is redesigned beyond redoing the distribution formula. The money allocated must be spent differently—more creatively, innovatively, and wisely—in order to ensure that the needs of the most vulnerable students are finally met.

Plan of Action

Title I needs a new allowable spending category approved that specifically enables and encourages districts to use funds for activities that drive equity-focused innovation. Making room for innovation grounded in equity is particularly important in this present moment. Equity has always been important, but there are now tools to better understand and implement systems to address it. As school districts continue to recover from the pandemic-related disruptions, explore new edtech learning options, and prepare for an increasingly diverse population of students for the future, they must be encouraged to drive the creation of better solutions for students via adding a spending category that indicates the value the federal government sees in innovating for equity. Some of the spending options highlighted below are feasible under the current Title I language. By encouraging these options tethered specifically to innovation, district leadership will feel more flexibility to spend on programs that can foster equity-driven innovation and create space for the new solutions that are needed to improve outcomes for students.

Innovation, in this context, is any systemic change that brings new services, tools, or ways of working into school districts that improve the learning opportunities and experience for students. Equity-focused innovation refers to innovation efforts that are specifically focused on improving equity within school systems. It is a solution-finding process to meet the needs of students and families. Innovation can be new, technology-driven tools for students, teachers, or others who support student learning. But innovation is not limited to technology. Allowing Title I funding to be used for activities that support and foster equity-driven innovation could also include:

Expanding Title I funding to make room for innovative ideas and solutions within school systems has the potential to unlock new, more effective solutions that will help close equity gaps, but spending available education funds on unproven ideas can be risky. It is essential that the Department of Education issues carefully constructed guardrails to allow ample space for new solutions to emerge and scale, while also protecting students and ensuring their educational needs are still met. These guardrails and design principles would ensure that funds are spent in impactful ways that support innovation and building an evidence base. Examples of guardrails for a school system spending Title I funding on innovation could include:

While creating an authorized funding category for equity-focused innovation through Title I would have the most widespread impact, other ways to drive equitable innovation should also be pursued in the short term, such as through the new Comprehensive Center (CC), set to open in fall 2024, that will focus on equitable funding. It should prioritize developing the skills in district leaders to enable and drive equity-driven innovation. 

Conclusion

Investment in innovation through Title I funding can feel high risk compared to the more comfortable route of spending only on proven solutions. However, many ways of traditional spending are not currently working at scale. Investing in innovation creates the space to find solutions that actually work for students—especially those that are farthest from opportunity and whom Title I funding is intended to support. Despite the perceived risk, investing in innovation is not a high-risk path when coupled with a clear sense of the community need, guardrails to promote responsible R&D and piloting processes, predetermined outcome goals, and the data systems to support transparency on progress. Large-scale, federal investment in creating space for innovation through Title I funding in—an already well-known mode of district funding not currently realizing its desired impact—will create solutions within public education that give students the opportunities they need and deserve.

This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.

This memo was developed in partnership with the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition dedicated to advocating for building a better research and development infrastructure in education for the benefit of all students. Read more education R&D memos developed in partnership with ALI here.