[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11314]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  0915
                       ALL CHILDREN ARE EQUAL ACT

  (Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania asked and was given permission to 
address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, today I rise to inform my 
colleagues of an important piece of bipartisan legislation that will be 
introduced later today called the All Children Are Equal Act, or ACE 
Act. The ACE Act corrects a gross inequity in the way funding formulas 
are calculated under title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education 
Act. Title I was designed to improve the achievement of disadvantaged 
children.
  In order to allocate more funding per title I student to local 
education agencies, or LEAs, with higher concentrations of poverty, the 
funding formula weighs the count of eligible students in an LEA. 
However, the formulas have the perverse effect of directing funds away 
from all smaller school districts, both urban and rural, towards larger 
LEAs, regardless of the poverty rate. The ACE Act would gradually 
decrease the effects of number weighting and return the focus to areas 
with the highest concentration of poverty, as originally intended under 
the law.
  Mr. Speaker, I'm proud to have Representative Slaughter of New York 
join me in introducing this important bill. I encourage my colleagues 
to join us in correcting this fundamental injustice.

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