Harkin, Specter Call on Education Department to Improve its NCLB Monitoring Process

GAO Report Reveals Flaws

Washington, D.C. -- March 25, 2008 -- With more than 10,000 schools across the country identified as low-performing under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report written at the request of U.S. Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) has found that the Education Department failed to properly oversee one of the most critical sources of NCLBA funding.

The report found that some states were ignoring key NCLBA requirements when allocating the 4 percent of their Title I funds required to be set aside to pay for school improvement efforts. The GAO recommended that the Education Department improve its Title I monitoring process on the basis of its findings; the Department agreed with all of the recommendations. Senators Harkin and Specter – Chairman and Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees funding for education, health and labor initiatives – will ask for an update on the Department’s progress in the next month.

“It is critically important that the millions of dollars in federal funds going to school improvement be used as effectively as possible to ensure that our students, teachers, and communities continue to meet state academic goals. The Education Department took the right steps in agreeing to revise its monitoring practices and I look forward to hearing what progress they have made in the coming months,” Harkin said.

“Education is one of our nation’s greatest capital assets,” said Specter. “Senator Harkin and I will continue to work with the Department of Education to ensure that No Child Left Behind’s monitoring process is effective and school improvement funds get to schools most in need of assistance.”

The report, titled “Education Actions Could Improve the Targeting of School Improvement Funds to Schools Most in Need of Assistance,” is available at this link or at www.gao.gov later this afternoon.

Among other things, the GAO made the following findings:

Some states have not allocated or tracked their school improvement funds as required by the NCLBA, and the Department of Education has failed to monitor the lapses. For example, all states are required to keep a complete list of the schools that receive improvement funds; three states (Arkansas, Florida and North Carolina) could not provide any school-level data to the GAO, and California could provide only a partial list. The GAO also found that in a few cases, “non-Title I schools had inappropriately received Title I school improvement funds.” Though the Education Department is responsible for monitoring the allocation of improvement funds, it did not uncover those issues.

All states are also required to take certain factors into account when allocating school improvement funds, such as focusing on the lowest-achieving schools. However, three states (Delaware, New Hampshire and Virginia) and the District of Columbia reported that they required districts to provide each school an equal amount of funding, and thus, the GAO states, may not have prioritized the allocation of funds as required under NCLBA. Again, the Education Department failed to identify those issues during its State monitoring efforts.

The GAO also found that many states have not been able to set aside the full 4 percent of Title I funds for school improvement, as intended under NCLBA. Twenty-two states were unable to set aside the full 4 percent for at least one year, and six of these – Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, and Michigan – were unable to do so for three or more years. These states were limited by a hold-harmless provision that prevents a state from reducing the Title I funding for any school district from the previous year.

Source: Senator Arlen Specter

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