ABSTRACT
Schools that receive federal Title I resources have long been driven by the need to comply with provisions for fiscal accountability. A series of regulatory and enforcement efforts dating to the early years of the Title I program have sought to ensure that funding is used to target compensatory education services to the intended population of low-income, educationally disadvantaged students (Peterson, Rabe, & Wong, 1988). A major consequence of this regulation has been the tendency of Title I schools to use categorical service delivery approaches as a means to demonstrate compliance with Title I regulations. To ensure that federal Title I resources reach the intended population, for example, Title I schools typically have “pulled out” eligible students from their regular classrooms and placed them in supplementary, remedial sessions for part of the school day. This seemingly fragmented strategy for Title I service delivery has widely affected the organization, instruction, and curriculum of schools serving disadvantaged students (Borman, D’Agostino, Wong, & Hedges, 1998).
