American Indian Education KnowledgeBase

This KnowledgeBase archive includes content and external links that were accurate and relevant as of September 30, 2019.

The American Indian Education KnowledgeBase is an online resource to aid education professionals in their efforts to improve the education of American Indian students and close the achievement gap American Indian students have faced in public, Bureau of Indian Education, and other schools.

Impact Aid Program

Because historically public school budgets depended in large part on local property taxes, the federal government established the Impact Aid program (now Title VIII of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) under the Truman Administration in 1950 to help public school districts with large number of students living on federal lands, especially military bases, that were not taxable. The authorizing legislation was amended in 1953 to include Indians living or working on Indian reservations and other federal trust land. Because many public school districts that serve American Indian children cannot draw tax revenue from Indian land or sales made on Indian land, they rely heavily on Impact Aid funding. In fact, many of the 640 Indian impacted school districts are totally dependent on these resources to operate. Besides providing money for the general operating budget of schools, there is also funding available for building schools.

After the establishment of the Impact Aid program, Johnson O'Malley (JOM) funding was reduced and shifted to the funding of special programs for Indian students. Previous to Impact Aid JOM funds went into the general operating budgets of public schools. The Indian Education Amendments of 1978 (P.L. 95-561) required increased Indian involvement in the spending of Impact Aid funds.

Additional resources providing information on the Impact Aid Program:

The contents of this website were developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education and are intended for general reference purposes only. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education or the Center, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Some resources on this site require Adobe Acrobat Reader. This website archive includes content and external links that were accurate and relevant as of September 30, 2019.