U.S. Government Accountability Office Director of Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues Testifies Before U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee On Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Federal Teacher Quality Programs

George A. Scott, U.S. Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) Director of Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues testified on “Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Federal Teacher Quality Programs” yesterday, April 13, 2011, before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.

The GAO published the transcript of Director Scott’s remarks, which discuss findings from the GAO’s recent work on fragmentation, overlap and potential duplication in federally funded programs that support teacher quality.  The findings outlined opportunities to reduce potential duplication across a wide range of federal programs, including teacher quality programs.

Other related work by the GAO has identified a number of education programs with similar goals, beneficiaries and allowable activities that are administered by multiple federal agencies, whose work may help bolster Congressional deliberations over how to prioritize spending, given the rapidly building fiscal pressures facing the nation’s government.

In recent years, the U.S. Department of Education (“DOE”) has faced expanded responsibilities that have challenged it to allocate resources in regard to balancing new duties with ongoing ones.  For example, the number of DOE grants recently awarded increased from about 14,000 in 2000 to about 21,000 just two years later and has since remained around 18,000, even as the number of full-time equivalent staff decreased by 13 percent from fiscal years 2000 to 2009.

Other GAO projects have identified 82 programs supporting teacher quality that display characteristics of fragmentation and overlap.  “Fragmentation” of programs exists when programs serve the same broad area of national need, but are administered across different federal agencies or offices.  Program “overlap” exists when multiple agencies or programs have similar goals, engage in similar activities or strategies to achieve them, or target similar beneficiaries.

The GAO identified 82 distinct programs designed to help improve teacher quality administered across 10 federal agencies, many of which share similar goals.  However, there is no government-wide strategy to minimize fragmentation, overlap or potential duplication among these programs, which can frustrate agency efforts to administer programs in a comprehensive manner, limit the ability to determine which programs are most cost effective and ultimately increase program costs.

In addition, the GAO’s larger body of work on federal education programs has also found a wide array of programs with similar objectives, target populations and services across multiple federal agencies.

In the past, the GAO and the DOE’s Inspector General have concluded that improved planning and coordination could help the DOE better leverage expertise and limited resources; however, given the large number of teacher quality programs and the extent of overlap, it is unlikely that improved coordination alone can fully mitigate the effects of the fragmented and overlapping federal effort.

The GAO states that sustained Congressional oversight can also play a key role in addressing these issues through legislation, specifically the pending re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. 

The DOE has already proposed combining 38 programs into 11 programs in its reauthorization and fiscal year 2012 budget proposals.  However, the GAO concludes that effective oversight may be challenging as many of the programs it has identified, especially smaller programs, which have not been evaluated.

To view the full report, click here.

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