Greater Use of Exemplary Education Programs Could Improve Education for Disadvantaged Children

A review was made of the efforts by the Department of Education to promote the adoption of exemplary programs by local school districts to improve reading projects that are conducted under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Since the primary mechanism of the Department of Education for disseminating information on exemplary Elementary and Secondary Education Act projects and for helping local school districts to implement such projects is the National Diffusion Network, GAO specifically reviewed the Network's performance in accomplishing its mission.

In its review, GAO found that, although many of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reading projects are improving the academic achievements of educationally disadvantaged students, some projects are not successful and should be improved. Presently, the services provided under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are discontinued for most students while they are still far behind their peers in academic achievement. A comparison of the accomplishments of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act projects with the reported capabilities of the Network's exemplary projects indicated that many school districts could improve their services by adopting exemplary projects. However, GAO found that, without adequate Federal and State emphasis on project quality, relatively few local school districts have sought to improve their Elementary and Secondary Education Act projects by adopting exemplary projects since local officials are not convinced that exemplary projects are better than their own. A contributing factor to this attitude is that limited data were available on the capabilities and accomplishments of the Network's exemplary projects. In fact, the limited amount of data available about exemplary project results and the Network's poor reporting requirements hampered Network officials' assessment of the Network's impact on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act program.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: No director on record Team: No team on record Phone: No phone on record