Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was implemented in 1965 to provide financial assistance to state and local education agencies to meet the special needs of educationally disadvantaged children. Federal funding supports a variety of supplemental services that share the collective purpose of improving educational opportunities and outcomes for low-achieving students from schools with concentrations of poverty. Evaluation of Title I programs has usually been through a norm-referenced model based on achievement test result changes. This meta-analysis, which included 17 studies, considered whether program services, taken as a whole, had significant impact on student achievement; and it offered the possibility of determining whether choices of different testing cycles and comparison methods have provided differential estimates of the program's impact. Evidence from the analysis indicated that Title I has not fulfilled its original expectation of closing the achievement gap between at-risk students and their more advantaged peers. Results did suggest that without the program it is likely that children served over the last 30 years would have fallen further behind academically. Evaluated from this perspective, Title I has been an invaluable supplement to schools serving disadvantaged children. (Contains 4 tables, 10 figures, and 50 references.) (SLD)