Source Form #10

Title:  Elementary and Secondary Education Flexibility Initiatives Do Not Address Districts’ Key Concerns About Federal Requirements

http://www.gao.gov/archive/2000/he00051t.pdf

Summary:  GAO provides key concepts about the funding of secondary education and the requirements that should be evaluated for flexibility initiatives when talking about the transferring of funds from one program to the next.

 

Topic:  http://msaraceno.wordpress.com/question/

 

Category: Institutional Source.

 

What is it? This is a testimony read to a congressional hearing committee. The online version of it.

 

Publication Information: GAO.  United States General Accounting Office.  January 25, 2000.  I do not see anywhere on here where this testimony was read.

 

Author:  Cynthia M. Fagnoni, Director Education, Workforce and Income Security Issues, Health, Education and Human Services Division.

 

Location: http://www.gao.gov/archive/2000/he00051t.pdf

 

Last Accessed: February 5, 2009

 

Support: In the actual article there are no references made to other sources.  However, the footnotes provide additional insight into the sources used to further the information.  A lot of the additional studies are from corresponding articles made by GAO.  Definitions include things like IEP and what that is—which the article never goes into because the audience obviously knew.  I believe the source notes are very important to the average reader, such as myself, who does not know all the programs or studies that have been done involving the topic of conversation.  The footnotes also give additional topic points to bring relevance to this report.

 

Audience and Agenda:  The audience for this report was the Committee on Education and the work force, House of Representatives.  The nature of this article is for appropriations of funds to specified needs of programs involved in the flexibility initiatives.  Therefore, the funding sought by this report is more the issue than where the article is receiving funding from.  Obviously this article has a one-sided view because of the issue of needing funds; therefore, the critical aspects may be leaving out other important factors not present in this document.

 

Usefulness:  The idea of this information is not directly related to my topic; however, it displays the complicated aspects of funding for programs identically challenging in nature within the education system.  The most important issue covered is the federal requirements and how those are broken down into even greater restrictions at the state level.  When such requirements are not met, the funding ceases to be provided.  Such an aspect is important in understanding how the stimulus package will be broken down for programs and how the federal government plans on making discretions on spending.  Since, I plan on breaking down why or why not the allocations of funds in the stimulus package should be going to certain parts of education (specifically Title I) This report is an important piece in further understanding the system as it stands before the administration takes steps in reforming.  Although I may not directly source out of this information, I at least have a better scope of how the inside of the factory works.

 Works Cited: