quality of schools exists between districts. Differences in the relative wealth of the districts, their willingness to pay, variations in costs, and variations in educational needs of the students are factors that often thwart attempts at equalization. Further, no discernible effort has been undertaken to reduce interstate inequities. A recent comprehensive evaluation of school finance reform indicated a general lack of federal support for such reform:

Efforts to make state school finance legislation more equitable in the near future are likely to be hampered not only by shortfalls in state tax collections, but also by the failure of the federal government to provide appropriate support for state reform efforts. Indeed, some important education legislation has the effect of directly undermining state reform programs.

Cited as examples were Impact Aid (Public Law 874) and the recently approved Federal Education for All Handicapped Children Act.

Any obstacles to continuing state reform efforts or the equalization among states falls heavily on school districts with large concentrations of Indian students. The special needs are for the most part large and the ability of the local community to pay is often very limited. Further, these school districts are disproportionately in states with either very low total revenues per pupil (Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico) or very high costs (Alaska). Seventy percent of Indian children enrolled in school districts with 10% or more Indian enrollment are from these four states.

Nearly 50% of all Indian students enrolled in public schools are in school districts in which they represent less than 2% of total enrollment. As a small minority, programs to meet their special needs are likely to be of relatively low priority compared with programs for other disadvantaged students, children with handicapping condition, etc. who may have more numerous advocates in the community. Where Indian students are widely dispersed in the school district or represent a very small absolute number of students, the costs for such programs may be very high. Further, the availability of federal funds for any special programs (e.g., funded through Title I (ESEA) may be dependent on the numbers of other disadvantaged students and not the disadvantaged status of the Indian students.

A comprehensive evaluation of the flow of funds from federal programs to Indian students has not, as yet, been undertaken. However, the limited studies that have been undertaken all point to the conclusion that general programs of federal aid have failed to reach Indian students in a fair and proportionate degree. One recent study indicated that Indian students are underparticipants in Title I programs for the disadvantaged. This study concluded that, although 70% of Indian children were classified as disadvantaged, only 25% of all Indians surveyed were actually in Title I programs. The study also found that, where Title I funds are concentrated to provide more intense services for fewer pupils. Indian students are diverted out of participation to an even greater degree.

Ackco, Inc.. "USOE/BIA Study of the Impact of Federal Funds on Local Education Agencies Enrolling Indian Children" (1975).

S. Smith and M. Walker, "Federal Funding of Indian Education: A Bureaucratic Enigma." Report No. 5, Legal Action Support Project, Bureau of Social Science Research, Inc. (Washington, D.C., May 1973).

A study by the Education Policy Research Institute indicates relatively weak correlation of total federal aid among school districts to the number of children in a community who come from impoverished homes. They found, based on a sample of school districts within 12 states, that in general "federal aid flows are positively related to increasing proportions of poverty pupils." However, their data indicated that in only three of the states were the correlation coefficients above 0.6 (see Table 1). Title I programs were found to be "much more highly correlated with poverty than all programs taken together." Review of unpublished data from the same source indicates that other than Title I, federal aid programs are not generally correlated to poverty measures.

TABLE 1.-RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FEDERAL AID AND POVERTY 1969-70 CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS

A recently completed study reached several germane conclusions concerning federal aid for Indian children based on a detailed analysis of school districts. They were as follows:

General. The existing methods of school financing have neither assured that Indian children receive an equalized per pupil expenditure nor that they are provided an adequate basic education program. This lack of adequate "basic support" is part of the cause for federal supplemental and special programs being used for items that should be part of the basic education program of every school.

Impact Aid Public Law 874.-Compilation of the P.L. 874 rate by using comparable districts in the same state as the LEA does not provide adequate funding to take care of basic education needs, and Indian LEAS spend more money compensating for geographic factors peculiar to reservations.

Johnson-O'Malley.-Either a distribution formula did not exist or, if one did exist, it was not equitable or was not being implemented. Title IV IEA.-Although findings indicate that Title IV programs are used to fund activities that are also funded under other programs, we conclude that Title IV is used to fund needed programs because of the absence of adequate basic support, the lack of or inadequate funding of other programs, or the failure of other programs to meet the needs of Indian people.

Title I ESEA.-Whether due to compatibility requirements or targeting procedures, Indian children are not receiving an adequate share of Title I funds to meet their needs. Also, especially in urban areas, Indian parents have little or no say in program matters.

• Op. cit.

In addition, federal programs that provide most of the federal funds in school districts with Indian children (Title I ESEA and SAFA) have not kept pace with the significantly increasing costs for education services. Between FY 1971 and 1975, Title I and SAFA funds remained nearly constant while per pupil expenditures nationwide increased about 42%.

Indian Students in Public Schools

Today, nearly 70% of all Indian students attend public elementary and seconday schools. Reported Indian pupil enrollment in FY 1975was 334,495. Seventy percent of these Indian pupils were concentrated in five states: Alaska, Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The remaining Indian students are dispersed widely through the remaining states and the District of Columbia.

The Office of Indian Education has identified 2.829 school districts in which one or more Indian students are enrolled. They average less than 3% of total enrollment in these school districts. In only 660 school districts do Indian students represent a significant minority (over 10% of total enrollment) or a majority. The distribution of all school districts with reported Indian enrollment and school districts reporting greater than 10% total enrollment by enrollment size category is shown in Table 2.

TABLE 2.—DISTRIBUTION OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS WITH INDIAN ENROLLMENT BY ENROLLMENT CATEGORY

Source: U.S. Office of Education, Office of Indian Education, unpublished data.

The distribution of school districts with reported Indian enrollment greater than 10 percent of total enrollment by enrollment category and state is shown in Table 3. Indian enrollment greater than 10 percent of total enrollment is concentrated almost entirely in school districts with total enrollments of less than 2,500 students; 621 of the total 660. Over half (339) of these school districts are in the state of Oklahoma. Arizona has 55 such school districts and only five other states (Alaska, California, Montana, South Dakota, and Washington) have over 20 districts with over 10 percent total Indian enrollment.

These 660 school districts account for over one-half (52.9 percent) of total reported Indian enrollment in public schools in the U.S. (see Table 4). Nearly two-thirds (63.3 percent) of these Indian students are in school districts with total enrollments of less than 2,500. The remaining 157,981 Indian students are enrolled in 2,169 school districts. In most instances, these latter students represent a very small minority of total enrollment.

7 U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Education Division, National Center for Education Statistics, "Statistics of Local Public School Systems, Finances, 1970-71" (1975) (Pub. No. NCES 75-149).

8U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, "Statistics Concerning Indian Education" (1973), pp. 1-2.

TABLE 3.- DISTRIBUTION OF SCHOOL DISTRICTS WITH SIGNIFICANT INDIAN ENROLLMENT BY ENROLLMENT CATEGORY AND STATE

TABLE 4.-DISTRIBUTION OF INDIAN STUDENTS BY ENROLLMENT CATEGORY AND STATE

Source: U.S. Office of Education, Office of Indian Education, unpublished data.

Analysis of Indian School Financing

The following analysis is based on information derived from a sample of 2,520 school systems collected and processed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). From this sample information was available on 790 school districts for which the Office of Indian Education has identified one or more Indian Students. A very limited subsample of 48 of these school districts had a reported Indian enrollment of greater than 10 percent of total enrollment.

Tabular presentation analyses were based on the following controls: (a) Six enrollment-size groups, based on school system average daily membership (ADM):

25,000 or more.

10,000 to 24,999.
5,000 to 9,999.
2,500 to 4,999.

300 to 2,499.

Under 300.

(b) Three metropolitan status categories:

Metropolitan, central.

Metropolitan, other.
Nonmetropolitan.

(c) Four regions of the United States:

North Atlantic.

Great Lakes and Plains.

Southeast.

West and Southwest.

Sampling information-including the universe for each of three school district categories, the respective samples and subsamples, and the number of systems listed and grouped in each enrollment category stratification-is presented in Table 5. Data for enrollment categories of less than 10,000 total enrollment are subject to sampling error. Obviously, for school districts with at least 10% Indian enrollment, the sampling error precludes any substantive inferences. The sample size for all school districts with reported Indian enrollment permits some preliminary inferences.

TABLE 5.-UNIVERSE AND SAMPLE ENROLLMENT CATEGORY STRATIFICATION

Source: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Indian Education, unpublished data.

The analysis focused on two areas: (1) a comparison of total per pupil expenditures in school districts with reported Indian enrollments and all school districts in the sample, and (2) a similar com

U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Office of Education, NCES, "Statistics of Local Public School Systems, Finance, 1969-70" (Pub. No. NCES 74–147).