Title 1-A grant funds for NMI schools to increase in October

A new education law signed by President Obama last Dec. 10 reauthorized the 50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act or ESEA, which is the national education law.

The previous version of the law, known as the No Child Left Behind Act enacted in 2002, sought to provide additional support services in spite of a student’s background. Due to the stringent requirements of the original act, many schools and educators called for a revision in 2007 but it wasn’t until this year that Congress responded to the need for changes.

The new law revises the priorities of the previous NCLB Act from student performance and school ratings determined by tests alone toward state driven and performance measured through multiple options.

The Act further does away with a one-size-fits-all federal accountability and supports and instead proposes state-developed identification and intervention with support for the bottom 5 percent of schools falling behind and schools with high dropout rates.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the Act further prioritizes teacher and leader evaluation and support systems including student learning and observations, introduces a competitive program to evaluate and reward effective educators and includes the provision to support pre-Kindergarten.

Implementation of the new law is ongoing nationwide.

Because of this enactment, millions of dollars in new funding for Northern Mariana Islands schools will become available, said Delegate Gregorio Kilili C. Sablan (Ind-MP).

The new law, he said, contains proposals from his bill, H.R. 851, to raise Title I-A grant funds going to U.S. insular areas.

Sablan said the Congressional Research Service projects Northern Marianas funding will go up from the current $6.8 million to $11.1 million each year, beginning next October.

Last month, Sablan noted that his bill is designed to give insular areas about 30 percent more funding than the CNMI has been receiving.

“For the Northern Marianas, the Congressional Research Service estimates Title I to increase to $11.1 million in 2017, up by $4.3 million from the 2016 funding of $6.7 million. The change is contingent upon overall Title I funding increasing so that states, as a whole, do not lose funding because of the change for insular areas. But appropriations for education are expected to rise in 2017. Every Student Succeeds also makes the NMI eligible to compete for Preschool Development Grants and Education Innovation and Research Grants, two competitive grant programs previously open only to states,” he said.

Title I, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, provides financial assistance to local educational agencies or LEA and schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards. Federal funds are currently allocated through four statutory formulas that are based on census poverty estimates and the cost of education in each state.

Recent data shows that schools used Title I funds to provide additional academic support and learning opportunities to help low-achieving children master challenging curricula and meet state standards in core academic subjects as well as special implementation preschool, after-school, and summer programs to extend and reinforce the regular school curriculum.

The new law is a welcome change after the CNMI Public School Systems’ efforts to push for a fairer share of Title 1 funding since 2014 for funding equity across the board.

Presently, PSS uses grant funding to hire Title 1 teachers for reading and mathematics support services. Most Title 1 teachers are retired teachers who are required to attain a professional business license and recommendations by previous supervisors.