Which Title I dollars actually moved the needle?
The question
Do New York City's Title I federal dollars actually improve outcomes at the schools that receive them?
We can't directly answer how Title I federal dollars translate to outcomes — we don't have per-pupil spending data joined to outcomes. The city Department of Education publishes School Allocation Memos (per-school funding figures) but as PDFs rather than as a structured data feed. Parent-teacher-association fundraising at wealthier New York City schools commonly reaches $500,000 to $1 million or more per year, which can change per-pupil totals in ways the formal allocation doesn't show. National research (Sean Reardon at Stanford) finds funding-to-outcome effects of roughly 1 to 2 percentage points per $1,000 per pupil — real but modest. A proper answer here is a 4-to-6-week project, not a quick query.
Data analysis
Investigation run 2026-05-31.
TL;DR
We can't answer this — we don't have per-pupil spending data ingested. The city Department of Education publishes School Allocation Memos (per-school funding) but they're not in a queryable format. Doing the story properly requires getting the allocation data plus parent-teacher-association fundraising data (federal Form 990s for the largest associations). Both are doable but substantial projects.
What's missing from our database
We have outcome data, demographic data, and survey data. We don't have: per-pupil spending per school, Title I designation per school, parent-teacher-association fundraising by school, or the city Department of Education's budget allocations. Without those, we can't compute spending-versus-outcome residuals.
What we know from prior research
Sean Reardon at Stanford finds funding-to-outcome effects are real but modest — roughly 1 to 2 percentage points per $1,000 per pupil. New York City's Fair Student Funding formula applies weights for English Language Learner enrollment, students with disabilities, and poverty; advocates argue the weights are too small to fully offset other resource gaps. Parent-teacher-association fundraising at the city's wealthier schools commonly reaches $500,000 to $1 million per year, which can change per-pupil totals well above the formal allocation.
How to actually do this
First, file a Freedom of Information Law request with the city Department of Education for the current-year School Allocation Memo in spreadsheet form. Second, pull federal Form 990 filings from ProPublica's nonprofit database for the 100 largest school parent-teacher associations. Third, sum allocation plus parent-teacher-association revenue per school to get total resources per pupil. Fourth, compute outcome residuals (actual minus predicted from challenge group) per school. Fifth, plot spending against residuals. Sixth, interview Leonie Haimson at Class Size Matters, who has advocated on this for years.
Caveats
This is a 4-to-6-week project, not a quick analysis. The allocation data is per-school per-year and the format changes annually, which makes historical comparison hard.
What's next
Class Size Matters and the Independent Budget Office have done partial versions of this analysis. Build on their work rather than starting from scratch.
Methodology & replication recipe — the data sources, queries, and steps behind this analysis.