Elementary and Secondary Education

The wide range of federal requirements that affect school districts reflect a host of policy goals and program objectives, such as ensuring equal educational opportunity and promoting high-quality instruction. Many of these federal requirements--especially those that most directly affect teaching--come with federal dollars, but others do not. Federal laws and regulations affect school districts in many ways, from the food they serve in their cafeterias to the special education programs they offer for the disabled to the construction and maintenance of school buildings. Federal requirements are augmented by state and local requirements as well as by court decisions. The school district officials GAO spoke with generally supported federal programs and mandates. At the same time, they voiced concerns about (1) the difficulty in obtaining accurate, timely, and sufficiently detailed information about federal requirements and federal funding; (2) the limited funds available to meet program and administrative costs; and (3) the logistical and management challenges posed by some requirements, such as those that specify timelines for completing procedural tasks or require specialized personnel. Several initiatives have been designed and implemented during the last five years to give school districts greater flexibility. For example, school districts may be able to obtain waivers from federal requirements and can sometimes combine or transfer federal program funds. However, the initiatives generally are not structured to address the information, funding, and management issues that school districts cited as their primary concerns.

GAO noted that: (1) the wide range of federal requirements that affect school districts reflects many different policy goals and program objectives; (2) many of these federal requirements--especially those that most directly affect teaching--come with federal dollars, but others do not; (3) federal laws and regulations affect school districts in all their varied activities; (4) federal requirements are augmented by state and local requirements and court decisions; (5) district officials generally expressed support for federal programs and mandates, recognizing the importance of goals such as ensuring school safety and promoting equal educational opportunity; (6) at the same time they noted their concerns with implementation issues that made achieving these goals more difficult; (7) rather than focusing on a single federal program or requirement, these implementation issues extend across several broad areas, including the: (a) difficulty in obtaining accurate, timely, and sufficiently detailed information about federal requirements and federal funding; (b) limited funds available to meet program and administrative costs; and (c) logistical and management challenges presented by certain requirements; (8) in the past 5 years, several initiatives have been designed and implemented to provide more flexibility to school districts; (9) however, some of these initiatives have not been widely used by the districts; (10) in addition, because they are narrowly structured, these flexibility initiatives generally do not address school districts' major concerns; (11) although information-related issues are very important to school district officials, the recent flexibility initiatives increase the amount of information districts need, rather than simplifying or streamlining information on federal requirements; (12) federal flexibility efforts neither reduce districts' financial obligations nor provide additional federal dollars; (13) because the flexibility initiatives are limited to specific programs, their ability to reduce administrative effort and streamline procedures is also limited; and (14) broadening the scope of federal flexibility efforts, however, raises concerns about whether the underlying goals of federal programs can be achieved without the guidance of specific regulatory provisions.