WASHINGTON — Federal money to help poor children learn math and reading will rise 7 percent next school year, with 16 states, including Maine, getting a double-digit boost, the Education Department said Tuesday.

The grant total will increase from $6.7 billion to $7.1 billion with most of the money designated for districts with high concentrations of poor children.

Maine will receive $28,085,368, an increase of 11.18 percent.

The changes reflect greater support by Congress for targeting the aid to poverty areas and an increase in the estimate of how many children live in poverty, officials said.

Most states will get more money than in the past. The increases are most dramatic for Connecticut, getting 29 percent more, and Massachusetts, getting nearly a 20 percent boost.

Fourteen other states will get double-digit increases, including Arizona, California and Florida, all of which have seen their immigrant populations rise.

For 14 states and Puerto Rico, the amount of aid under the so-called Title I program will drop. The biggest decline would be for Iowa, which will get 6.22 percent less.

The grant money helps pay for teachers, summer programs, curricular changes and other help for children.

“There’s good news that we’re moving the money,” said Mary Jean LeTendre, head of Title I at the Education Department. “The not-so-good news is that there’s a lot more poor kids out there than there were before.”

The distribution is based on a mixture of outdated 1990 census data and some 1994 updates, which have not been approved by a scientific advisory panel.

In 1994, Congress called for the use of updated Census estimates in distributing Title I money. Without that requirement, money would be sent out for next year based on poverty estimates taken in 1989, before a national recession.

But a panel of the National Academy of Sciences, which advises Congress, has raised questions about the 1994 Census Bureau model for updating estimates. The panel recommended using a blend of both estimates for sending out the 1997-1998 school year funds.

The poverty rate for school-age children was 17.5 percent in 1989, but 21 percent as of the Census update, the department says. The allocations use a midpoint.

Congress, meanwhile, concerned that the money was being spread too thinly, raised the amount of targeted aid.

That amount will increase 46 percent in 1997-1998, compared with a 2.5 percent increase for “basic aid,” which goes to just about every school district. Critics have said too much of that money goes to undeserving schools. The $7.1 billion does not include aid under some smaller Title I programs.

In a state such as Connecticut, with several troubled urban districts, the concentrated aid would increase 166 percent, compared with a 20 percent rise for basic aid. The package will total $67 million, up from $52 million.

“Even though Connecticut has the highest per capita income in the nation, we have three of the nation’s poorest cities,” said Tom Murphy, spokesman for the state education department, mentioning Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven.

In Iowa, though, officials worried about the impact of cuts on the 31,000 children served by the program, which will get $47.5 million instead of $51 million.

Sue Donielson, the state’s Title I administrator, said there will be problems even in districts where poverty isn’t concentrated.

“Every district has got children who are in need,” she said.