Rural-school advocates note rural, black-led districts hurt by Title I formula

Rural-school advocates are campaigning against the federal funding equation that gives added weight to districts based on the raw number of impoverished students regardless of their percentage in a district's population, and now they have added a racial element. Of the so-called "Rural 900" school districts, those with the highest student poverty rates that lose the most by the "number weighting" system, 93 are led by black superintendents, Marty Strange writes for the Formula Fairness Campaign website.

Those 93 superintendents account for over one-fourth of the 371 black superintendents nationwide. The 93 districts lost a combined $8.2 million in federal Title I funding because of number weighting, Strange reports. The loss leasder was the Greenville Public School District in Mississippi, with a $360,000, while Covert Public Schools in Michigan had the greatest per-student loss, $300 per disadvanatged student. Greenville has a student poverty rate of 51 percent; Covert's is 48 percent. The average student poverty rate of all schools in the Rural 900 is 39 percent, more than double the national average. (Read more)