I. Introduction

The Title I program began in 1965 as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and is intended to help ensure that all children have the opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach proficiency on challenging state standards and assessments. As the largest federal program supporting elementary and secondary education (funded at $12.7 billion in FY 2006), Title I, Part A targets these resources primarily to high-poverty districts and schools, where the needs are greatest. Title I provides flexible funding that may be used to provide additional instructional staff, professional development, extended-time programs, and other strategies for raising student achievement. The program focuses on promoting schoolwide reform in high-poverty schools and ensuring students' access to scientifically based instructional strategies and challenging academic content. Title I holds states, school districts, and schools accountable for improving the academic achievement of all students and turning around low-performing schools, while providing alternatives to students in such schools to enable them to receive a high-quality education.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), which first went into effect beginning with the 2002-03 school year, reauthorized the Title I program and made a number of significant changes. NCLB strengthened the accountability provisions of the law, requiring that states establish assessments in each grade from 3-8 and once in grades 10-12, and set annual targets for school and district performance that would lead to all students reaching proficiency on those assessments by the 2013-14 school year. Schools and districts that do not make adequate yearly progress (AYP) towards this goal are identified as needing improvement and are subject to increasing levels of interventions designed to improve their performance and provide additional options to their students. NCLB also required that all teachers of core academic subjects become highly qualified, which the law defines as holding a bachelor's degree and full state certification, as well as demonstrating competency, as defined by the state, in each core academic subject that he or she teaches. These and other changes were intended to increase the quality and effectiveness not only of the Title I program, but of the entire elementary and secondary education system in raising the achievement of all students, particularly those with the lowest achievement levels.