Federal audit dings Ohio over RTTT spending
(Ohio) In what may prove a cautionary tale in an era of federal flexibility, auditors from the U.S. Department of Education have called into question millions of dollars in spending by Ohio schools from a $400 million Race to the Top grant.
Ohio, which had been praised earlier this year as the only recipient state to fully comply with the RTTT conditions, is now sorting out findings that it failed to properly ensure that two districts used the grant funds only on allowable activities.
Specifically, auditors pointed to spending at Lorain City Schools and Toledo Public Schools on tablet computers, salary payments, travel reimbursements, consultant costs as well as promotional expenses such as tee-shirts, gift cards and student prizes.
The report includes a number of recommendations including a requirement that the state order the districts to reassign the questionable expenses to other programs or provide additional documents supporting the original claims – if not, investigators said, Ohio should return the disputed funds.
Ohio officials have not challenged the findings but did commit to implementing a risk-based financial compliance monitoring that will cover the 2012–13 fiscal year. The system, state officials said, would include a review of accounting records, purchase orders, invoices, cancelled checks, budgets, contracts, cash requests, and other items.
The spending analysis, first to dive deeply into RTTT spending, comes as the Obama administration looks to remove much of the bureaucratic red tape and compliance activities surrounding federal education spending. More than 40 states since 2012 have been given relief from key mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, with a number of states also receiving one-year extensions.
A report released in May by the department’s Institute of Education Sciences found most states that received a share of more than $5 billion in RTTT funding beginning in 2009 have struggled to adopt and implement all the grant conditions – especially the teacher evaluation component.
While most of the 29 states reviewed used teacher evaluation results to guide decisions on professional development and dismissals, just one, Ohio, also used the evaluations to inform promotional decisions.
In a second finding of the Ohio RTTT audit, reviewers said the state had provided performance data that was not accurate or lacked proper documentation. They noted a lack of support for the number Federal audit dings Ohio over RTTT spending :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet: