It wasn’t long ago that states like Mississippi admitted that Title I funding was used to build and equip cafeterias and libraries, to hire teachers, and to provide instructional materials and books to Black students that had long been available to White students. This is known in technical terms as “supplanting,” which, albeit less blatantly, many states and districts still do due to weak regulatory oversight. Read the letter we co-signed today with the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP, NCLR, and others urging USDOE, once and for all, to end this shell game and enforce the law’s requirement that Title I funds supplement, not supplant, state and local resources intended for low-income and minority students.
