Summary
As a condition of receiving federal funding for elementary and secondary education programs, states each year provide vast amounts of data to Education. While the need for information that informs evaluation is important (particularly with the No Child Left Behind Act), Education's data gathering has heretofore presented some problems. It has been burdensome to states because there are multiple and redundant requests administered by a number of offices. In addition, the resulting data supplied by states has not been accurate, timely, or conducive to assessing program performance. To improve the information by which it evaluates such programs and also to ease states' reporting burden, Education in 2002 initiated an ambitious, multiyear plan to consolidate elementary and secondary data collections into a single, department-wide system focused on performance. Given its importance, we prepared a study, under the authority of the Comptroller General, to provide Congress with information on its progress.
Through its Performance-Based Data Management Initiative (PBDMI), Education has consolidated and defined much of the data it anticipates collecting under a unified system. Education reports that many data definitions have been agreed-to and data redundancies eliminated. PBDMI officials also said that to date, however, it has not been able to resolve all remaining differences among the program offices that manage many of the different data collections. PBDMI officials have conducted extensive outreach to the states to advance the initiative. The outreach to states involved regional conferences, two rounds of site visits, and according to officials, $100,000 in grants to most states to help offset their costs. State data providers responding to our survey expressed general satisfaction with the department's outreach, but some were not optimistic that the initiative would ease their reporting burden or enhance their own analytic capacity. The states were not able to produce enough data during test submissions in 2003 and 2004 to enable data quality verification or phasing out the department's multiple data collections. With regard to the lack of sufficient data from many states, Education officials said some lack the technical capacity needed to produce new performance data requirements. State data providers reported having competing demands for their time and resources, given other federal initiatives. Education officials have decided to proceed with the undertaking and have developed a draft interim strategy for moving forward. But they currently have no formal plan for how they would overcome obstacles such as the lack of state data and other technical and training delays to the initiative.
Recommendations
Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change
from "In process" to "Implemented" or "Not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director:
Team:
Phone:
Cornelia M. Ashby
Government Accountability Office: Education, Workforce, and Income Security
(415) 904-2272
Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: To address the issues identified with regard to planning, decision-making, and improving data quality, the Secretary of Education should develop a strategy to help states improve their ability to provide quality data given the challenges that many states face in providing data.
Agency Affected: Department of Education
Status: In process
Comments: Education agrees with this recommendation and reported that it took the following actions to address it: 1) established the IES Longitudinal Statewide Data Systems Grant Program. Grants were first awarded in the Fall of 2005 and the next round of awards will be in FY 2007; 2) provided and continues to provide technical assistance to states through its Data Quality and Standards contract with the Council of Chief State School Officers; 3) joined the Data Quality Campaign in the Winter of 2005-2006, with more than 10 other national education groups and continues to participate; 4) established a joint collection with OSEP in November 2005 and reduced the data submitted to the OSEP DANS, which is still ongoing; and 5) provided states with support through the Partner Support Center, which was established in the Summer of 2005.
Recommendation: To address the issues identified with regard to planning, decision-making, and improving data quality, the Secretary of Education should develop a clear process for reconciling differences between the program offices and the PBDMI oversight office to ensure that decisions critical to the success of PBDMI are made.
Agency Affected: Department of Education
Status: In process
Comments: Education agreed with this recommendation and is taking steps to address it. Specifically, the agency reported that it: 1) put the Strategic Accountability Service in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development (OPEPD) to provide agency-wide information collection review authority; 2) brought policy issues before the ED Policy Committee chaired by the Assistant Secretary OPEPD; 3) held a meeting in November 2005 in which it committed to eliminate conflicting data definitions; 4) worked intensively with RIMS to establish which collections could be restructured and published an initial list as Attachment D in the EDEN 2006-2007 collection proposal; and 5) established an agency review panel with leadership representation from all K-12 program offices to meet every week to resolve data differences. In addition, during the EDEN 2006-2007 data definition cycle, the Assistant Secretary OPEPD, conducted agency review panel meetings to resolve data differences.
Recommendation: To address the issues identified with regard to planning, decision-making, and improving data quality, the Secretary of Education should develop a clear plan for completing final aspects of PBDMI, including specific time frames and indicators of progress toward the initiative's goals.
Agency Affected: Department of Education
Status: In process
Comments: Education agreed with this recommendation and is taking several steps to address it. First, the agency established an on-line survey tool as well as analysis and reporting tools (EDFacts) on ednet in the spring of 2006. Since that time, EDFacts reports were provided to the states. Second, Education published a new regulation for the mandatory collection of EDEN 2006-2007 data in the Federal Register on April 27, 2006. Finally, the agency is committed to continually providing more assistance to states, retire more collections, resolve additional data differences, and update OMB, GAO and Congress on EDEN activities and successes--efforts that will never be "completed."
