The Elementary and Secondary Education Act is a United States federal statue enacted on April 11, 1965, when signed by President Lyndon Johnson.

Originally, the Act was authorized through 1970; however, the government has reauthorized the Act every five years since its first enactment.

The current reauthorization is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

The purpose of the Act is to provide funds for primary and secondary education to support “at-risk students.”

There are multiple sections to this Act, all with the word “title” to start and then a roman numeral.

Title I is the focus of this article.

Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, is the largest federal education program for elementary and secondary schools.

For the 2009-10 school year, Congress provided $14.5 billion through regular appropriations for Title I, Part A.

These funds are targeted to high poverty school districts and used to provide supplementary educational services, usually in the areas of reading/language arts and math.

The purpose of the services is to help students who are educationally “at risk” of failing to meet state standards.

The state standards are tested once each year in the form of MEAP and MME.
Dowagiac Union Schools, along with more than 90 percent of the school districts in the United States, receives Part A funds.

Our funds are divided between our four elementary buildings and middle school.
With our allocation, we supply supplemental educational services to identified students.
Students are identified through a set of guidelines put forth in the Act.

Each elementary school has a Title I teacher and one para-professional who work with the identified students in specific targeted areas of reading, writing and/or math.

The supplemental instructional strategies that are used by Title I teachers and paraprofessionals are based on scientifically based research to improve the students’ academic achievement.

One such program that is being implemented in all elementary buildings by our Title I teachers is Reading Recovery.

Also, we are very pleased to have four general education teachers using the intervention.
Reading Recovery is a highly effective intervention of one-to-one tutoring for low-achieving early elementary students in reading and writing concepts.

Individual students receive a half-hour lesson each day for 12 to 20 weeks with a specially trained Reading Recovery teacher.

As soon as the students can meet grade-level expectations and demonstrate that they can continue to work independently in the classroom, their lessons are discontinued, and new students begin the instruction.

This intervention was piloted at Kincheloe Elementary last year with tremendous success and was then expanded into the other elementary buildings this school year.

Our Title I and general education teachers using Reading Recovery have made a significant commitment of their personal time and efforts to receive the necessary training to implement the intervention.

The coursework is a full year and the training intense.

Our teachers develop observational skills and a repertoire of intervention procedures designed to meet the individual needs of our at-risk students.

We know from our data that the intervention is working and our students’ academic achievement needs are being met.

We celebrate our successes and move to the next set of challenges.

This week’s column is by Patti Brallier, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.