The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted down a plan that would have allowed federal education funding for high-poverty schools to follow low-income students wherever they enroll, including private schools.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., led the push for so-called “Title I portability,” which he said would have helped states support school choice for low-income students.
An amendment he offered to a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act would have given states the option of allocating their share of federal Title I funding to schools based on the number of low-income students who enrolled.
Advocates at different points of the political spectrum have critiqued the current formulas for distributing $14 billion in Title I funding, which is intended to help high-poverty schools increase services for disadvantaged students.
School choice supporters have long gravitated to proposals like Scott’s, which they hope would give schools an incentive to serve low-income students, and a fair share of resources to support them.
“Education policy is not about protecting a bureaucracy,” he said this morning on the Senate floor. “It should not be about empowering Washington, and it cannot be about an endless, fruitless push for some one-size-fits-all type of system.”
The proposal was defeated 45-51, with seven Republicans joining a united bloc of Democrats in opposition.
Title I provided nearly $780 million to Florida school districts this school year — an amount that pales in comparison to state and local funding sources, but accounts for nearly half the federal funding public schools receive. The current Title I system allows private schools to request support services for eligible low-income students from their local school districts.
Opponents of portability say current funding formulas let states and school districts steer money to schools with concentrated poverty, where it’s most needed.
“Instead of diluting federal funding in the name of choice, I think it’s really important in this legislation that we provide our most at-risk children with more resources within the public-school system,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the leading Democrat on education issues, said of Scott’s proposal when he brought it up in committee this spring.
On the Senate floor this morning, however, Scott said it’s common for public funding to follow low-income students to public or private schools outside the K-12 system.
“The federal government already authorizes vouchers for education. We just call them Pell Grants,” he said, referring to the program that helped him pay tuition at Charleston Southern University. “Too often, too many of our poor kids, our kids of color, never receive a Pell Grant because their high schools did not prepare them for college.”
A version of Title I portability exists in the Student Success Act, which passed the House last week, but it applies only to public schools. The concept has been criticized by national associations representing school districts, as well as left-leaning think tanks. The Senate’s rewrite of the key federal education law is expected to face a final vote in the coming days, after which the two plans would have to be reconciled.
