Marguerite Roza
Published February 20, 2019 on Brown Center Chalkboard, Brookings Institution
In this blog post, Marguerite Roza discusses new U.S. Department of Education guidance on monitoring the “supplement-not-supplant” (SNS) provision of Title I. SNS specifies that federal Title I funds for schools with high concentrations of poverty must be used to augment state and local funding, rather than offset it. Where the Obama Administration attempted (and failed) to require an equity spending test across a district’s schools, the Trump Administration guidance requires no such test, something equity advocates may see as a different SNS—as in “sorry not sorry.” And while the new guidance does require districts to spell out how they divvy up funds across schools, it is unclear on what constitutes a legitimate “methodology” beyond that it must treat Title I schools no differently than others.
