How Does the U.S. Department of Education Serve the Eastern Shore?

George Shivers • March 6, 2019

The federal Department of Education largely impacts the Eastern Shore through Title I Grants to local education agencies. In 2016 the nine Eastern Shore counties received over 18 million dollars, with Wicomico County receiving the largest grant and Kent County, the smallest grant, as shown in the chart below.

President Obama’s budget for 2017 proposed a 2% increase overall to the Department of Education budget over 2016 levels. The Education Dept. budget for 2018 included a $1 billion increase for Title I for FOCUS grants. These would provide supplemental awards to school districts that adopt student-centered weighted funding formulas combined with open enrollment systems.

The Title I, Part A, program provides financial assistance to local educational agencies and schools with high numbers or percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet state academic standards. The four statutory formulas for grants are based primarily on census poverty estimates and the cost of education in each state.

The second program under the aegis of the federal Department of Education that impacts the Eastern Shore is the Pell Grant program to college students. There are six institutions of higher education on the Eastern Shore, one private and five public: Cecil College in Cecil County, Washington College (private) in Kent County, Chesapeake College in Queen Anne’s, Worwic College and Salisbury University in Wicomico, and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in Princess Anne. Cecil, Chesapeake and Worwic are 2-year community colleges. While many students at Washington College, Salisbury University and UMES are not natives of the Eastern Shore, some are and the student bodies of Cecil, Worwic and Chesapeake are primarily, if not entirely, local. The number and percentage of students from each institution who received grants and loans in 2016-2017 are shown in the following chart:

In addition, there is a for-profit, less-than-2-year institution, the Delmarva Beauty Academy in Wicomico County. Students there received 46 Pell Grants, representing 72% of the student body, and another 69% received federal loans. The average Pell Grant was $4,330 and the average loan amount was $8,239.

The Eastern Shore received 8.3% of Pell Grants received in Maryland and 9.1% of federal loans received in Maryland.

Thus the US Education Department has quite a significant impact on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In a typical recent academic year, 2016-17, just over 6,000 students enrolled in Eastern Shore higher education institutions received Pell Grants, while slightly more than 8,000 received federal loans. That adds up to thousands of students in Eastern Shore colleges who might not otherwise have been able to attend college.

Sources:

https://www2.ed.gov/programs/titleiparta/index.html

https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget17/budget-factsheet.pdf

National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/

National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/

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