Most states had not received a consolidated review since 2019
What’s the Scoop With Broach analyzed the Government Accountability Office’s September 2026 review of federal monitoring under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. GAO found that 32 of 51 states and the District of Columbia had not undergone consolidated monitoring since 2019.
Twenty-five of 51 had not been monitored on reporting requirements, and 22 of the 36 states that chose chronic absenteeism as a school-quality indicator had not been monitored on that indicator. The Education Department suspended comprehensive monitoring in 2026 while it reconsidered the process.
| Measure | Count | Share |
|---|---|---|
| States/DC without consolidated monitoring since 2019 | 32 of 51 | 62.7% |
| States/DC not monitored on reporting requirements | 25 of 51 | 49.0% |
| Chronic-absence indicator states not monitored | 22 of 36 | 61.1% |
| FY2025 ESEA funding | Nearly $27B | Program total |
| Title I funding | More than $18B | About two-thirds |
The data system accepted implausible performance rates
GAO found mismatches between state and federal definitions and records that produced rates above 100%. More than 30% of low-performing or shared-time schools in the reviewed data had implausible rates, compared with less than 2% of other schools—a gap of at least fifteenfold.
Those errors can affect school-identification and improvement decisions. GAO’s concern was not that every flagged school performed badly, but that the underlying rate could not be trusted without correction.
A pause follows years of incomplete coverage
The original contribution is the combined view of the coverage gaps: broad monitoring stopped after years in which most states had not received a consolidated review, and the same oversight system contained material data-quality problems.
Education told GAO it was reassessing monitoring. A pause does not itself prove funds were misused, and GAO did not test every state grant or school result. It does, however, leave no comprehensive replacement operating at the time of the review.
Method and limitations
The newsroom recomputed percentages from GAO’s state counts and compared the report’s funding, monitoring and data-quality findings. Counts include the District of Columbia, which is why the denominator is 51.
GAO’s review is a federal oversight assessment, not an audit of every local school. The implausible-rate comparison describes the datasets GAO tested and should not be generalized to all schools without further analysis.