Alabama currently gets $1,366 per needy student - that's $647 below the average for the five top-funded states in the US.

The current system of allocating Title I funds to the majority of our neediest children living in the majority of the states is simply not fair. When it was created 44 years ago, the hope was that Title I would level the educational playing field for our country's neediest schoolchildren. Today, the way our government distributes these funds means that disadvantaged students in some states receive hundreds of dollars less than those in other states.

The Education Trust supports changing the Title I funding formula to "raise the floor" for disadvantaged kids across America. The plan is simple. After accounting for differences in the cost of education and poverty both within and among states, our plan would provide most states with a new Title I "funding floor" per poor child of $2,013 by 2013.