GAO: States Coping With Federal Demands for K-12 Data

The Department of Education is doing a better job handling the avalanche of data it requests from the states on elementary and secondary school programs, according to the Government Accountability Office.

But it is still struggling to reduce the burden on the states, which must gather information under dozens of different federal education programs, the watchdog agency of Congress says.

An Oct. 28 GAO report praised the Education Department’s plan to reduce state data requests through its Performance Based Data Management Initiative, which began in 2002. When complete, the database is supposed to streamline data-collection efforts and reduce the work states must do...