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Public Information Office CB99-24
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David Waddington
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Census Bureau Releases School District Poverty Estimates
that May be Used to Direct Aid to Disadvantaged Children
The Commerce Department's Census Bureau today released 1995 poverty
and population estimates on the Internet for each of the nation's
approximately 15,000 school districts.
These estimates provide the Department of Education with updated
information to use for allocating funds to the nation's school districts
for the 1999-2000 school year under Title I of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act. The funds help pay for education programs to aid
disadvantaged children.
An evaluation of the methodology used to develop these estimates was
carried out by a special panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).
Despite the high level of uncertainty associated with the estimates, they
were endorsed by the NAS for use by the Department of Education in funding
Title I grants in 1999.
"We expect that new data from both Census 2000 and the American
Community Survey will enable us to improve these estimates substantially,"
said Daniel Weinberg, chief of the Census Bureau's Housing and Household
Economic Statistics Division, in releasing these estimates.
The Census Bureau produced the estimates for school districts (as
defined for the 1995-96 school year) by updating 1990 census data for each
school district. Specifically, the estimates represents the number of poor
children aged 5-17 in families, the total number of children aged 5-17 and
the total population.
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The U.S. Census Bureau, pre-eminent collector and disseminator of timely,
relevant and quality data about the people and the economy of the United
States, conducts a population and housing census every 10 years, an
economic census every five years and more than 100 demographic and
economic surveys every year, all of them evolving from the first census in
1790.
