The Department of Education provides billions of dollars in grants for programs to improve K-12 outcomes. Do they work?

​The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released its report on the challenges of assessing grant programs serving K-12 students. Education faces challenges determining whether these programs work. Specifically, problems persist with:

• Oversight. For example, some program grant files were missing descriptions of what grantees achieved.
• Data quality. Education lacks assurance that some state-submitted data are accurate.
• Capacity. A lack of qualified staff has impacted monitoring, and Education hasn’t updated hiring plans in years.
• Study design. Measuring long-term outcomes can be difficult.

Click here to read the full report.