amples. Long-form-sample estimates enter indirectly into the allocation of funds under Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act (estimated $12.7 billion obligated in fiscal 2005). This program allocates funds to school districts to meet the needs of educationally disadvantaged children by formulas that include estimates of poor school-age children. In the past these estimates were obtained from the most recent census long-form sample; currently, more up-to-date estimates are obtained from statistical models developed by the Census Bureau in its Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program.³

The SAIPE state- and county-level models include long-form-sample poverty estimates as one input together with more up-to-date information from administrative records to predict school-age poverty from a 3-year average of data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). The school district-level model uses the previous census long-form-sample estimates of within-county school district shares of poor school-age children to apply to the updated county model estimates of the number of poor school-age children. The SAIPE program produces annual estimates with a 2-year lag between release and the estimates’ income reference year; the lag is due to delays in acquiring administrative records that are required for the modeling.

Because the 2010 census will not include a long-form sample, policy makers and program managers must develop strategies for introducing ACS estimates into funding program allocation formulas that previously used long-form-sample estimates and decide whether such a change will require legislation or can be handled by regulation. The primary benefits of using ACS estimates are that they will be more timely and up-to-date and probably of higher quality than estimates from the long-form sample, so that the resulting fund allocations will more accurately reflect the distribution of needs among eligible areas.⁴ Still, the ACS estimates will have higher sampling error than long-form-sample estimates.

Role of Policy Makers The role that policy makers and program managers play in decisions about the use of ACS estimates in allocation formulas