Title I, Part A, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) authorizes federal aid to local educational agencies (LEAs) for the education of disadvantaged children. Title I-A grants provide supplementary educational and related services to low-achieving and other pupils attending pre-kindergarten through grade 12 schools with relatively high concentrations of pupils from low-income families. In recent years, they have also become a "vehicle" to which a number of requirements affecting broad aspects of public K-12 education for all pupils have been attached as a condition for receiving Title I-A grants. These include requirements for assessments of pupil achievement; adequate yearly progress (AYP) standards and determinations for schools, LEAs, and states; consequences for schools and LEAs that fail to make AYP for two consecutive years or more; plus teacher and paraprofessional qualifications. Title I-A is the largest federal elementary and secondary education assistance program, with services provided to (1) more than 90% of all LEAs; (2) approximately 52,000 (54% of all) public schools; and (3) approximately 16.5 million (34% of all) pupils, including approximately 188,000 pupils attending private schools. Three-fourths of all pupils served are in pre-kindergarten through grade 6, while only 8% of pupils served are in grades 10-12. The ESEA was initially adopted in 1965, and was most recently reauthorized and amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), P.L. 107-110 . NCLB authorized Title I-A through FY2007, and an automatic extension, through FY2008 was provided under the General Education Provisions Act (Title IV of P.L. 90-247, as amended). Currently, although the authorization for ESEA Title I-A has expired, appropriations have continued to be provided, and the program continues to be implemented under the policies established by the most recent authorization statute. The 111 th Congress is expected to consider proposals to extend and amend the ESEA. The focus of this report is on the formulas used to allocate Title I-A funds to states, LEAs, and schools. These formulas are used to allocate funds not only under the largest federal K-12 education program, but also several other ESEA and non-ESEA programs under which grants are made in proportion to ESEA Title I-A allocations. This report will not be updated. Another CRS report (CRS Report RL33731, Education for the Disadvantaged: Reauthorization Issues for ESEA Title I-A Under the No Child Left Behind Act , by [author name scrubbed] and [author name scrubbed]) discusses issues related to the accountability and other policies of ESEA Title I-A. Those interested in a more concise description of the ESEA Title I-A allocation formulas and review of reauthorization issues related to them than found in this report should refer to the final section of that report ( RL33731 ) . Additional CRS reports provide more detailed discussions and analyses of selected major aspects of the Title I-A program, including pupil assessments, accountability, and qualifications for teachers and paraprofessionals. Also, see CRS Report RL34721, Elementary and Secondary Education Act: An Analytical Review of the Allocation Formulas , for a description and analysis of all of the ESEA's allocation formulas, as well as a discussion of general allocation formula concepts and procedures. This report provides: (a) descriptions of the ESEA Title I-A allocation formulas; (b) a review of recent funding trends for Title I-A; and (c) analyses of major issues related to the Title I-A allocation formulas, divided into general categories of broad issues directly affecting all regions of the nation and issues that directly affect only a limited number of states or local educational agencies. In summary, major Title I-A reauthorization issues regarding allocation formulas are likely to include the following: Should annual variations in the poverty estimates used to calculate Title I-A grants be reduced through multi-year averaging or other methods? Annual variations in estimates of school-age children in poor families have been exceptionally large for a number of states. Several options are available to reduce the more extreme variations, if desired. Has the targeting of Title I-A funds on high poverty LEAs increased since 2001? Targeting of Title I-A funds on the highest poverty LEAs has increased since adoption of the NCLB, although shifts have been gradual and relatively marginal. Should the population weighting factors of the Targeted and Education Finance Incentive Grant (EFIG) formulas be modified to more equally favor LEAs with large numbers of school-age children in poor families and LEAs with high poverty rates? In some respects, the formula population weighting factors of the Targeted and EFIG formulas favor LEAs with large numbers of formula children over those with high school-age child poverty rates. Should the expenditure factor continue to play a major role in the Title I-A formulas? The expenditure factor has a major impact on the distribution of all Title I-A funds, and the rationale for using this factor may be questioned. At best, it is a crude and indirect measure of variations in the costs of providing public K-12 education. Should there be some consolidation of the four different allocation formulas? The allocation of portions of each year's Title I-A appropriation under four different allocation formulas is a result of legislative compromise, not design. Should the authorization level for Title I-A continue to be specified for future years, and if so, at what levels? An authorized appropriation level was specified in the ESEA only through FY2007. Should the effort factor in the EFIG formula be modified? The current effort factor has very limited impact and favors states where school-age children are a relatively small share of the total population. Should the equity factor in the EFIG formula be modified? The current equity factor might be broadened to consider additional categories of "high cost" pupils. Should the current provisions for intra-LEA allocation be reconsidered? The participation of middle and, especially, high schools in Title I-A programs is very low, and might be increased through modification of the requirements for allocation of funds within LEAs. Issues Affecting a Limited Number of States or LEAs: Should the remaining special constraints on grants to Puerto Rico, the cap on aggregate population weights in the Targeted Grant formula, be removed? Title I-A grants to Puerto Rico would be substantially higher if remaining special constraints were removed. Should the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) formula factor be eliminated? This formula population factor is of little significance, and may remain primarily for historic and symbolic reasons. Should each county portion of New York City and other multi-county LEAs continue to be treated as separate LEAs under the Title I-A allocation formulas? This provision leads to substantially different treatment of Title I-A schools in different counties within New York City, and has mixed impact on total Title I-A grants to the City overall. Finally, a general introductory note regarding funding levels and allocations: Most references to appropriation levels, and all discussions and analyses of allocation patterns, in this report refer to those for FY2008 , the most recent year for which actual allocations were available at the time this report was prepared. Therefore, there will be only marginal reference to FY2009 appropriations or allocations for Title I-A, whether provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ( P.L. 111-5 ) or regular FY2009 omnibus appropriations legislation ( P.L. 111-8 ). For the allocation of funds to states and LEAs, ESEA Title I-A has four separate formulas: the Basic, Concentration, Targeted, and Education Finance Incentive Grant (EFIG) formulas. Once these funds reach LEAs, they are no longer treated separately; they are combined and used without distinction for the same program purposes. A primary rationale for using four different formulas to allocate a share of the funds for a single program is that the formulas have distinct allocation patterns, providing varying shares of allocated funds to different types of localities (e.g., LEAs with high poverty rates, or states with comparatively equal levels of spending per pupil among their LEAs), as is discussed later in this report. In addition, some of the formulas contain elements—such as the equity and effort factors in the EFIG formula—that are deemed to have important incentive effects or to be significant symbolically in addition to their impact on allocation patterns. There is also a historical explanation: the Targeted and EFIG formulas, in particular, were initially proposed as replacements for the Basic plus Concentration Grant formulas; that is, each of the Targeted and EFIG formulas was originally intended to be the Title I-A formula. But in subsequent deliberations, these formulas were ultimately authorized to supplement, but not replace, the Basic and Concentration Grant formulas, and implicitly to complement each other. The discussion below describes the characteristics of the Title I-A allocation formulas as these have been amended by NCLB. The description immediately below is similar to that in a report on all of the ESEA program allocation formulas, CRS Report RL34721, Elementary and Secondary Education Act: An Analytical Review of the Allocation Formulas , by [author name scrubbed]. The formulas are described in three different formats: First, the general characteristics of all four formulas are introduced in very brief, narrative form. Second, selected characteristics of the four formulas are summarized in tabular format in Table 1 . Third, each of the four formulas is described individually, and in greater detail, including a mathematical expression of each formula. While numerous complications and special features are associated with the Title I-A allocation formulas, each of them has the same underlying structure.