The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported on September 23, 2026 that the Department of Education discontinued its most comprehensive monitoring of Elementary and Secondary Education Act programs in 2026. The process, called consolidated monitoring, was fully implemented in 2019 and was the department's main tool for checking whether states complied with ESEA programmatic and fiscal requirements, including Title I. GAO found that 32 of 51 states, counting the District of Columbia, had never undergone a consolidated review, and that as of August 2026 the department had not provided a timeline for resuming the process.
Education officials told GAO the department suspended consolidated monitoring because it is developing plans for future monitoring activities, but had not provided a timeline or details on an alternative as of August 2026. In an August 21, 2026 letter responding to GAO's draft, Assistant Secretary Kirsten Baesler said the department had not ceased monitoring, cited more than 100 oversight and monitoring activities from 2019 to 2025, and called GAO's broad statements about its oversight inaccurate. She also said the department would provide its fiscal year 2027 monitoring plan in early fall 2026.
A statutory gap
GAO found that the ESEA provision intended to improve oversight of funds does not explicitly direct the department to monitor grantees, nor does it include requirements about the method or frequency of monitoring. The department told GAO it must oversee grantees but has broad discretion in how. By contrast, Congress wrote explicit monitoring duties into the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Child Care and Development Block Grant. GAO identified the lack of such a requirement in ESEA as a statutory gap.
What is at stake
Title I accounts for about two-thirds of the nearly $27 billion in total ESEA funding in 2025. GAO said Education is not currently assessing compliance with ESEA fiscal requirements for Title I, placing the funds at higher risk of undetected fraud, waste, or abuse. GAO described this as a heightened risk, rather than evidence of actual misuse. The department disputes the characterization, citing the other oversight activities it has conducted.
The National Title I Association and Education Week reported that the pause in consolidated monitoring is likely related to the department's implementation of interagency agreements, under which programs are being shifted or co-administered with other agencies such as the Department of Labor. The Trump administration is moving administration of Title I and other key K-12 programs to the Department of Labor.
Chronic absenteeism data questioned
GAO also examined chronic absenteeism reporting. Twenty-five states remain unmonitored on chronic absenteeism reporting requirements that apply to all states. The department's method for calculating chronic absenteeism rates counts chronically absent students over a full school year but relies on a single-day enrollment count, producing rates above 100 percent in about 2.5 percent of schools in 2022-2023. More than 30 percent of shared-time and low-performing schools had implausible rates, compared with under 2 percent for other schools. The department called the mismatch a known limitation and declined to require a more uniform approach, but agreed to publish nonbinding guidance for shared-time schools.
Recommendation and response
GAO recommended that Congress consider enacting clearer state monitoring requirements for ESEA and that the department promptly resume more comprehensive monitoring. The department did not concur with the recommendation to resume monitoring and disagreed with most of the report's conclusions.