This amounts to approximately 3 percent of students. Unlike Straight A's, REI would preserve all of the current ESEA formulas REI would allow school districts facing a certain set of problems to be exempted from ESEA spending requirements. This should not be understood as an attack on the formulas, rather it is a way of helping the rural counties that are too small to fit neatly into a formula. Small rural districts would continue to apply for the formulas, but they could also expect some additional assistance. Unlike Straight A's, REI targets rural districts with high poverty and special needs Even though there is no poverty requirement in the Rural Education Initiative, the bill would affect counties that typically have higher than average poverty rates.
Rural schools lack an accurate poverty count.
In any case, there is no reliable data to track the enrollment of poor students. Instead of demanding that a district provide a better poverty count, REI assumes that a district small enough and rural enough to be eligible for the program probably has a significant number of poor students. Unlike Straight A's, REI does not alter any federal formulas. It only allows for the commingling of funds among formula programs affected by small populations REI affects the four formulas that have under-funded small rural schools in the past. Straight A's, on the other hand, affects most of the federal education programs without justifying why each program should be included.