This study explores the rationality of state aid allocations to local school districts for providing opportunities to at-risk, limited-English-proficient (LEP), and gifted and talented pupils, referred to throughout as fringe populations, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics 1995-1996 Common Core of Data. Findings indicate that state aid programs for these populations are largely idiosyncratic. States with exemplary programs for fringe populations are Texas where LEP aid falls slightly below, but compensatory aid meets, minimal adequacy benchmarks and is both rational and equitable, and gifted education aid is allocated in an equalized pattern-and Virginia, where compensatory aid passes on all three measures, and gifted education aid is substantial and strongly equalized. States with consistently less than exemplary records include Kansas-which provides uniformly inadequate, questionably rational, and partially disequalizing aid for compensatory and LEP programs-and New Mexico, whose aid allocations resemble those of Kansas.
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