Compensatory Education

Compensatory education predominately refers to programs instituted by the federal government targeted at low-achieving, low-socioeconomic, or otherwise disadvantaged children for remediation education. Compensatory programs are based on two interrelated concepts: “cumulative deficit” and the “vicious cycle of poverty.” The idea is that if a child begins school behind her peers that this deficit will continue throughout her educational career, resulting in her securing a low-paying job, which will then place her children at a disadvantage, and the cycle continues. Through compensatory education, this cycle can be interrupted.

The premise underlying compensatory education is that disadvantaged children need remediation in core subjects (i.e., reading, mathematics, or languages arts) because of factors (i.e., poverty) that are beyond their control—the belief being that compensatory education will compensate for these disadvantages that many children have and put them on equal footing with their peers. The federal government has legislated two major compensatory education programs: Title I and Head Start. Title I will be the major compensatory education program discussed in this entry, giving a short history of the program and its major components. A brief description of Head Start will follow.

The largest compensatory education program for impoverished children ever funded by the federal government (approximately $13 billion annually) is commonly referred to as “Title I, Better Schooling for Educationally Deprived Students.” Title I began as one component of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which was one of the major programs in President Lyndon Johnson's “War on Poverty.” Title I continues to be a primary source of funding for a variety of programs and services targeted for students deemed to be at risk of educational failure.

In 1981, under the Regan administration, Title I became known as “Chapter I,” as part of the Educational Consolidation and Improvement Act. As Chapter I, compensatory services remained relatively unchanged, but the legislation did allow and even encourage high-poverty areas to develop schoolwide programs. Schools were held accountable for outcomes of their students, they were encouraged to place emphasis on teaching higher-order thinking skills, and they were required to link services to the regular education curriculum. Because of dissatisfaction with results from Chapter 1, in 1994, it was once again renamed Title I under President Bill Clinton's Improving America's School Act (IASA) and continues to be known as Title I today. Under IASA, standardsbased outcomes and authentic assessments were [Page 183]mandated that were linked to general education curricula and practices, which basically required schoolwide reform for Title I programs.

The two major goals of Title I have been to improve education in low-income schools and to advance the equality of educational outcomes. Through Title I, state educational agencies (SEAs) are allocated monies based on census counts to be given to local education agencies (LEAs) in their states to assist public schools with the highest percentages of low socioeconomic children. Participating schools (unless a school is operating as a schoolwide program) must then target Title I services to those children who are either failing or at risk of failing to meet state standards. These monies are to be used to improve the quality of education in high-poverty schools and to ensure that all children meet rigorous state standards.

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