Department of Education: Information Needs Are at the Core of Management
Challenges Facing the Department (Statement/Record, 03/24/98,
GAO/T-HEHS-98-124).

GAO discussed the challenges the Department of Education faces in
carrying out its mission efficiently and effectively and in improving
its accountability for the results of its efforts.

GAO noted that: (1) while the Department has developed and submitted to
Congress its 5-year strategic plan and 1999 performance plan as required
by the Government Performance and Results Act, much additional work
needs to be done; (2) GAO's work indicates that the Department's
management has three major challenges: (a) with respect to preschool,
elementary, and secondary education area, the need to balance the
competing objectives of collecting uniform program information to assess
performance while giving states and localities the flexibility to
implement their unique programs; (b) primarily in the preschool,
elementary, and secondary education area, the difficulty of assessing
overall effectiveness of similar education programs that are scattered
among multiple agencies and departments; and (c) problems associated
with the Department's ability to collect, maintain, and use reliable
information on its postsecondary programs to protect the federal
government's financial interests; (3) in GAO's view, the Results Act
provides a framework for Education to address these challenges; and (4)
moreover, the extent of its success in overcoming these challenges will
in turn determine its success in implementing the requirements of the
Results Act.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  T-HEHS-98-124
     TITLE:  Department of Education: Information Needs Are at the Core 
             of Management Challenges Facing the Department
      DATE:  03/24/98
   SUBJECT:  Strategic planning
             Program evaluation
             Aid for education
             Accountability
             Agency missions
             Interagency relations
             Higher education
             Secondary education
             Elementary education
             Federal/state relations
IDENTIFIER:  Government Performance and Results Act
             GPRA
             Pell Grant
             Federal Family Education Loan Program
             William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program
             Dept. of Education Perkins Student Loan Program
             DOL School to Work Program
             Dept. of Education Drug-Free Schools and Communities Program
             Dept. of Education National Student Loan Data System
             Dept. of Education Central Automated Processing System
             
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Cover
================================================================ COVER


Before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services,
Education and Related Agencies, Committee on Appropriations, House of
Representatives

For Release on Delivery
Expected at 2:00 p.m.
Tuesday, March 24, 1998

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION -
INFORMATION NEEDS ARE AT THE CORE
OF MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES FACING
THE DEPARTMENT

Statement for the Record by Cornelia M.  Blanchette
Associate Director, Education and Employment Issues
Health, Education, and Human Services Division

GAO/T-HEHS-98-124

GAO/HEHS-98-124T


(104921)


Abbreviations
=============================================================== ABBREV


DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: 
INFORMATION NEEDS ARE AT THE CORE
OF MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES FACING
THE DEPARTMENT
============================================================ Chapter 0

Mr.  Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee: 

I am pleased to provide this statement for the record in which we
discuss challenges the Department of Education faces in carrying out
its mission efficiently and effectively and in improving its
accountability for the results of its efforts. 

The Department, created in 1980, manages the federal investment in
education and leads the nation's long-term effort to improve the
quality of education and ensure equal access.  The Department
accomplishes this by providing financial support to states, local
education agencies, and postsecondary students.  It also promotes
challenging educational achievement standards and family and
community involvement in schools, provides information on the best
educational practices, and provides statistics on and evaluations of
federal programs.  The Department has a special obligation to ensure
that all students have the opportunity to achieve the challenging
academic standards.  In this regard, this commitment often requires
that the Department focus its resources and activities on students
who risk educational failure as a result of the disadvantages they
face. 

The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (the Results Act)
presents the Department with the opportunity to better manage the
Department at all levels.  It provides a vehicle for federal managers
to clearly delineate and focus on their agencies' missions, develop
both short- and long-term goals for fulfilling their missions, and
establish performance indicator systems that tell managers how well
their agencies are doing.  For this reason, provisions of the Results
Act and the Department's implementation of them provide the framework
for my discussion of the Department's management challenges.  My
observations are based on our work involving the Department's
programs over the past few years and a review of the Department's
strategic plan (see list of related GAO products at the end of this
testimony). 

In summary, while the Department has developed and submitted to the
Congress its 5-year strategic plan and 1999 performance plan as
required by the act, much additional work needs to be done.  Our work
indicates that the Department's management has three major
challenges:  (1) with respect to the preschool, elementary, and
secondary education area, the need to balance the competing
objectives of collecting uniform program information to assess
performance while giving states and localities the flexibility to
implement their unique programs; (2) primarily in the preschool,
elementary, and secondary education area, the difficulty of assessing
overall effectiveness of similar education programs that are
scattered among multiple agencies and departments; and (3) problems
associated with the Department's ability to collect, maintain, and
use reliable information on its postsecondary programs to protect the
federal government's financial interests.  In our view, the Results
Act provides a framework for Education to address these challenges. 
Moreover, the extent of its success in overcoming these challenges
will in turn determine its success in implementing the requirements
of the Results Act. 


   BACKGROUND
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:1

Education is generally a state responsibility--especially for
elementary and secondary education--with the federal government
playing an important supporting role.  The nation spends more than
$500 billion a year on education, with state, local, and private
expenditures accounting for about 91 percent of this amount (see fig. 
1).  The Department of Education--with a staff of about 4,600 and a
fiscal year 1998 budget of about $34.7 billion--carries out its
mission of improving the quality of education and ensuring equal
access to programs by providing financial resources, including making
student loans and awarding grants for higher education; providing
research and information on best practices in education; and ensuring
that publicly funded schools and education programs observe civil
rights laws.\1

The Department manages two distinctly different types of
programs--(1) preschool, elementary, and secondary and (2)
postsecondary.  Programs that serve preschool, elementary, and
secondary students operate in a milieu in which education is under
state and local control and the federal investment is relatively
small--generally about 7 percent of funding (see fig.  2).  The
recipient of federal funds is usually a state or local education
agency.  Some elementary and secondary programs have broadly defined
objectives that give states flexibility to set their own priorities. 
As a result, these programs sometimes lodge accountability at the
state or local level, which can complicate the task of holding the
Department accountable for the results of programs--a task that is
accomplished by developing programwide measures of performance based
on grantee-reported data.  For example, grant programs that operate
through state or local programs, but are accountable for meeting
federal performance objectives, can present formidable performance
accountability issues because federally funded activities as well as
the information collected about performance may vary from state to
state.  The Department's ability to manage its efforts in the
elementary and secondary area is heavily dependent on having clearly
defined objectives, valid assessment instruments, and accurate and
consistent program data. 

   Figure 1:  Total Expenditures
   for Education in the United
   States, 1996-97 (Dollars in
   billions)

   (See figure in printed
   edition.)

\a Includes expenditures of all federal agencies. 

\b Federally supported student aid that goes to higher education
institutions through students' tuition payments is shown under "All
Other" rather than under "Federal." Such payments would add
substantial amounts and several percentage points to the federal
share. 

Source:  Department of Education. 

   Figure 2:  Federal Investment
   in Public Elementary and
   Secondary Education Is Small

   (See figure in printed
   edition.)

Source:  Department of Education. 

In the postsecondary area, the primary recipients of federal funds
are students and parents.  In this area, the Department is
accountable for both ensuring equal access and protecting the
financial interests of the federal government.  The Department makes
available billions of dollars in loans and grants to promote access
to programs, but it also bears a major portion of the risk for loan
losses.  Its ability to manage these dual responsibilities is heavily
dependent on having adequate management information systems that
contain reliable data.  Our work has shown that, to a large extent,
management of the postsecondary education programs has been difficult
because the student aid programs have many participants; involve
complicated, cumbersome processes; and lack adequate information
management systems.\2 The problems associated with these issues
contributed to our identification in 1992 of the Guaranteed Student
Loan program\3 as one of 17 federal government high-risk areas
especially vulnerable to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.\4 We
later recognized that some of the problems associated with that loan
program also applied to the Federal Pell Grant Program; therefore, in
1995, we revised the definition of our high-risk area to include all
student financial aid provided under title IV of the Higher Education
Act of 1965 (HEA), as amended.\5

According to its own data, the Department currently administers
approximately 180 programs.  The two largest elementary and secondary
programs are through title I of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA).  Title I helps support the education of over 6 million
disadvantaged children in more than 50,000 schools nationwide--about
one-half of the nation's public schools; IDEA supports special
education programs that assist over 5 million children with
disabilities from birth through age 21 in meeting their educational
and developmental needs.  At the postsecondary level, the Department
administers the federal student financial aid programs established
under title IV of HEA.  These student aid programs--the Federal
Family Education Loan Program, the Ford Federal Direct Loan Program,
the Federal Pell Grant Program, the Federal Perkins Loan Program, and
several smaller financial aid programs--fund approximately 75 percent
of all postsecondary student financial aid in the nation. 


--------------------
\1 The Department, through its Office for Civil Rights, is
responsible for enforcing the following civil rights laws as they
relate to schools at all levels:  (1) title VI of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race,
color, or national origin; (2) title IX of the Education Amendments
of 1972, which prohibits discrimination in education programs and
activities on the basis of sex; (3) section 504 of the Rehabilitation
Act of 1973, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of
disability; (4) the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, which prohibits
discrimination on the basis of age; and (5) title II of the Americans
With Disabilities Act of 1990, which prohibits public entities from
discriminating on the basis of disability. 

\2 High-Risk Series:  Student Financial Aid (GAO/HR-97-11, Feb. 
1997). 

\3 The Guaranteed Student Loan Program was renamed the Federal Family
Education Loan Program. 

\4 High-Risk Series:  Guaranteed Student Loans (GAO/HR-93-2, Dec. 
1992). 

\5 High-Risk Series:  Student Financial Aid (GAO/HR-95-10, Feb. 
1995). 


      RESULTS ACT AND OTHER
      LEGISLATION ARE INTENDED TO
      IMPROVE MANAGEMENT
      GOVERNMENTWIDE
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:1.1

The Results Act is aimed at improving federal agency performance.  It
is the centerpiece of a statutory framework that the Congress put in
place during the 1990s to help resolve the long-standing management
problems that have undermined the federal government's effectiveness
and efficiency and to provide greater accountability for results.\6
The Results Act seeks to shift the focus of government
decision-making and accountability away from a preoccupation with the
activities--such as the number of grants and program reviews
made--and toward the results of those activities--such as more
positive student outcomes and gains in program quality. 

Under the Results Act, strategic plans are the starting point and
basic underpinning for performance-based management.  Thus, strategic
plans are crucial because they serve as a basis for guiding agencies'
operations and helping congressional and other policymakers make
decisions about activities and programs.  Agencies, in consultation
with the Congress and other stakeholders, are to clearly define their
missions and articulate comprehensive mission statements that define
their basic purposes.  Under the act, an agency's strategic plan is
to contain six key elements:  (1) a comprehensive agency mission
statement; (2) agencywide long-term goals and objectives for all
major functions and operations; (3) approaches (or strategies) and
the various resources needed to achieve the goals and objectives; (4)
a description of the relationship between the long-term goals and
objectives and the annual performance goals; (5) an identification of
key factors, external to the agency and beyond its control, that
could significantly affect the achievement of the strategic goals;
and (6) a description of how program evaluations are used to
establish or revise strategic goals and a schedule of future program
evaluations. 

The act also requires agencies to submit annual performance plans
tied to their budget requests to reinforce the connections between
the long-term strategic goals outlined in the strategic plans and the
day-to-day activities of program managers and staff.  These plans are
to (1) identify annual performance goals and measures for each agency
program activity, (2) discuss the strategies and resources needed to
achieve annual performance goals, and (3) provide an explanation of
the procedures the agency will use to verify and validate its
performance data.  The Department has publicly released both its
first strategic plan and its annual performance plan. 

Our review of the Department's strategic plan showed that its
long-term goals and objectives were succinct and logically linked to
its mission statement, and the quality of the goals and objectives
reflected the Department's effort to comply with the Results Act.\7

In addition, the plan addressed in some form all of the Department's
major statutory responsibilities.  However, it did not completely
clarify how the Department would resolve data integrity issues with
respect to its largest loan program, the Federal Family Education
Loan Program.  These issues concern the Department's inability to
accurately estimate the government's liability, which has prevented
the Department from obtaining an unqualified audit opinion on its
annual financial statements for the past 2 years.  The Department's
audit of its fiscal year 1997 financial statements will not be
completed until May 1998. 

The Department has developed and submitted its 1999 performance plan
with its budget request.  We are now reviewing this plan. 


--------------------
\6 The Results Act is part of a larger statutory framework that is
composed of the Chief Financial Officers Act and information
technology reform legislation, including the Paperwork Reduction Act
of 1995 and the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996.  The Congress enacted the
Chief Financial Officers Act in 1990 to remedy decades of serious
neglect in federal financial management by establishing chief
financial officers across the federal government and requiring the
preparation and audit of annual financial statements.  See Managing
for Results:  The Statutory Framework for Performance-Based
Management and Accountability (GAO/GGD/AIMD-98-52, Jan.  28, 1998). 

\7 See The Results Act:  Observations on the Department of
Education's June 1997 Draft Strategic Plan (GAO/HEHS-97-176R, July
18, 1997) and Managing for Results:  Agencies' Annual Performance
Plans Can Help Address Strategic Planning Challenges (GAO/GGD-98-44,
Jan.  30, 1998). 


   INFORMATION IS CENTRAL TO THE
   DEPARTMENT'S OVERCOMING KEY
   MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2

To efficiently and effectively manage its many programs, oversee its
large portfolio of loans, and assess the impact of its efforts, the
Department needs reliable information about its programs and their
effects.  Without such data, the Department will not know whether it
is accomplishing its performance goals; whether midcourse program
changes are needed; what effect its programs are having on the
American people; or whether fraud, waste, or mismanagement has
occurred.  Moreover, it will not be able to give the Congress needed
information to make important decisions about the Department's
programs.  Our work shows that in some areas, the Department does not
have the information needed to effectively carry out its
responsibilities. 


      COMPETING OBJECTIVES:  LOCAL
      PROGRAM FLEXIBILITY AND
      VARIATION VERSUS
      ACCOUNTABILITY AND
      UNIFORMITY
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2.1

The goal of having enough information for accountability and federal
program management continually competes with the aim of providing
local agencies with the flexibility needed to implement their
programs on the basis of their unique local needs.  When flexibility
is given, the types of activities carried out vary from locality to
locality, as do program objectives, information, and measures of
success.  On the other hand, accountability for overall program
performance is facilitated by uniform performance objectives and
measures of their accomplishment.\8 The Safe and Drug-Free Schools
program, for example, allows a wide range of activities, such as drug
prevention instruction for students; staff training; general
violence-prevention instruction; and special one-time events, such as
guest speakers and drug- and alcohol-free social activities.\9

States are also permitted to define the information they collect on
program activities and effectiveness.  Under the Safe and Drug-Free
Schools and Communities Act, state agencies monitor local programs. 
The Department in turn oversees state programs.  Under the act, each
state may establish its own reporting requirements for local
education agencies.  Although these requirements have some common
elements, state requirements vary widely.  With no requirements that
states use consistent measures, our work has shown that the
Department faces a difficult challenge in assembling the required
state reports to develop a nationwide picture of the program's
effectiveness. 

Another information issue involves program impact evaluation.  Impact
evaluations are the only way to answer the question, "Is this program
making a difference?" The Department's research is aimed toward,
among other things, improving the availability of research and data
on promising and best practices and promoting widespread access to
sound, well-tested educational knowledge.  Evaluating program impact
generally requires a planned study and, often, considerable time and
expense.  Each of the tasks involved--measuring outcomes, ensuring
the consistency and quality of data collected at various sites,
establishing the causal connection between outcomes and program
activities, and distinguishing the influence of extraneous
factors--raises formidable technical or logistical problems.  Program
features affect the relative difficulty of getting reliable impact
information.  The more varied the program activities and the less
direct the connection between the provider and the federal agency,
the greater the challenge of getting comparable, reliable data on
clients and services.  For example, for a program such as Safe and
Drug-Free Schools, a flexibly managed grant in which a wide range of
activities are allowed and states define the information they collect
on program activities and effectiveness, collecting comparable,
reliable data on clients and services is difficult.  Also, because of
the absence of comparison groups, it is extremely difficult to
estimate the impact of a long-standing program that covers all
eligible participants.\10


--------------------
\8 Balancing Flexibility and Accountability:  Grant Program Design in
Education and Other Areas (GAO/T-GGD/HEHS-98-94, Feb.  11, 1998). 

\9 Safe and Drug-Free Schools:  Balancing Accountability With State
and Local Flexibility (GAO/HEHS-98-3, Oct.  10, 1997). 

\10 Program Evaluation:  Improving the Flow of Information to the
Congress (GAO/PEMD-95-1, Jan.  30, 1995). 


      MULTIPLE FEDERAL PROGRAMS
      MANAGED BY DIFFERENT
      AGENCIES
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2.2

Our work shows that billions of federal education dollars are
distributed through hundreds of programs and more than 30
agencies.\11 This situation creates the potential for inefficient
services as well as difficulty for those trying to access the most
appropriate services and funding sources.  To illustrate, figure 3
shows the programs in various agencies targeted to three specific
groups--young children, at-risk and delinquent youth, and teachers. 
The overlap of programs and agencies also makes assessing the impact
of the total federal effort difficult.  For example, each program may
have its own measures at federal, state, and local levels.  If the
Congress wanted to know the overall effectiveness of a broad federal
effort, such as helping at-risk and delinquent youth, the task would
be even more daunting than the one the Department of Education faces
in developing a nationwide picture of one flexibly administered
program. 

   Figure 3:  Three Target Groups
   Served by Multiple Programs and
   Agencies

   (See figure in printed
   edition.)

Note:  Circled numbers indicate number of programs. 

The Results Act offers a structured framework to address crosscutting
program issues.\12 Each of its key stages--defining missions and
desired outcomes, measuring performance, and using performance
information--offers a new opportunity to address fragmentation and
overlap.  For example, the Results Act is intended to foster a
dialogue on strategic goals involving the Congress as well as agency
and external stakeholders.  This dialogue should help to identify
agencies and programs addressing a similar mission and associated
performance implications.  The act's emphasis on results-based
performance measurement should lead to more explicit discussions of
contributions and accomplishments within crosscutting programs and
encourage related programs to develop common performance measures. 

In its strategic plan, the Department identified crosscutting program
activities.  For example, in the elementary and secondary area, the
Department defined the need to work with the Departments of Health
and Human Services and Agriculture for preschool programs and the
Department of Labor for the School-to-Work program. 


--------------------
\11 Federal Education Funding:  Multiple Programs and Lack of Data
Raise Efficiency and Effectiveness Concerns (GAO/T-HEHS-98-46, Nov. 
6, 1997). 

\12 See Managing for Results:  Using the Results Act to Address
Mission Fragmentation and Program Overlap (GAO/AIMD-97-146, Aug.  29,
1997). 


      ENSURING ACCESS TO
      POSTSECONDARY INSTITUTIONS
      WHILE PROTECTING FEDERAL
      FINANCIAL INTERESTS
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2.3

Through its student aid programs, the Department has enabled millions
of students to attend postsecondary educational institutions.  At the
same time it is concerned with access, the Department's ongoing
challenge is to improve its processes to ensure financial
accountability in its postsecondary student aid programs.  For
example, the federal government has lost billions of dollars on
defaults.  Long-standing data integrity problems have plagued the
Department's management of its student financial aid programs.  In
part because of these problems, we reported in 1995 that the
Department's use of available student aid data was generally
ineffective for monitoring and enforcing compliance with
requirements.\13 Moreover, over the years, both its largest loan
program--the Federal Family Education Loan Program--and its Pell
Grant Program have encountered fraud and abuse.  Department
initiatives to improve information resources management have not
fully succeeded in improving data quality. 

A related issue concerns problems with its multiple student aid data
systems.  As student aid programs were implemented during the past 30
years, the Department developed separate data systems to support each
one.  These multiple systems contain incompatible data in nonstandard
formats--a situation that has led to inaccurate information,
inefficient systems, and high costs.  In a 1997 report, we
highlighted the benefits of systems integration--cost reductions
through increased productivity and decreased data redundancy and
streamlined operations.  The lack of systems integration, on the
other hand, has led to reduced management efficiency, compromised
system integrity, and escalating costs.  As a result, we recommended
that the Department develop a systems architecture that would allow
it to integrate its various student aid data systems.\14

In response to these and other audit findings, the Department has
begun corrective actions.  For example, it has initiated efforts to
develop a comprehensive plan to address National Student Loan Data
System data integrity issues and has issued guidance for external
auditors to use that requires them to test guaranty agencies'
billings for claims such as default payments.  The Department is also
developing a system called the Education Central Automated Processing
System.  These and other actions the Department is taking indicate
that it is committed to resolving its financial management problems. 
A sustained effort, however, is critical to the Department's having
the reliable information necessary for sound financial management. 

The Results Act provides a framework for the Department as it
addresses its data integrity and systems problems.  For example,
under the act, agencies state in their annual performance plans the
operational processes, skills, and technology as well as the human,
capital, information, and other resources required to meet
performance goals.  Annual performance plans can show the Congress,
as well as focus top management attention on, agencies' plans to
manage cost-effective mixtures of critical resources, including
information, in pursuit of performance goals. 


--------------------
\13 Student Financial Aid:  Data Not Fully Utilized to Identify
Inappropriately Awarded Loans and Grants (GAO/HEHS-95-89, July 11,
1995). 

\14 Student Financial Aid Information:  Systems Architecture Needed
to Improve Programs' Efficiency (GAO/AIMD-97-122, July 29, 1997). 


   CONCLUSION
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3

In carrying out its mission, the Department of Education has a
careful balancing act to perform.  While elementary and secondary
education is largely the states' responsibility, this federal
department is expected to provide leadership at the national level. 
For example, in the preschool, elementary, and secondary education
areas, it is expected to give state and local education agencies
flexibility in using federal funds and freedom from unnecessary
regulatory burden, yet it must have enough information about programs
and how money is spent to be accountable to the American taxpayers
for the federal money spent at the state and local levels.  Moreover,
managing the federal investment in education is a particularly
difficult challenge for the Department because of the many programs
and departments involved in the federal effort to improve public
preschool, elementary, and secondary education.  In the postsecondary
area, the Department's challenge is balancing access for all while
protecting federal financial interests.  Our work has shown that
these problems are not new to the Department, but adequately
addressing them has proved difficult.  The Results Act now provides
the Department with a framework for addressing these challenges and
improving the information available to its managers and the Congress. 


-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3.1

This concludes my prepared statement.  Please contact me on (202)
512-7014 if you have questions about the information presented in
this statement. 

RELATED GAO PRODUCTS

Executive Guide:  Measuring Performance and Demonstrating Results of
Information Technology Investments (GAO/AIMD-98-89, Mar.  1998). 

Balancing Flexibility and Accountability:  Grant Program Design in
Education and Other Areas (GAO/T-GGD/HEHS-98-94, Feb.  11, 1998). 

Managing for Results:  Agencies' Annual Performance Plans Can Help
Address Strategic Planning Challenges (GAO/GGD-98-44, Jan.  30,
1998). 

Managing for Results:  The Statutory Framework for Performance-Based
Management and Accountability (GAO/GGD/AIMD-98-52, Jan.  28, 1998). 

Federal Education Funding:  Multiple Programs and Lack of Data Raise
Efficiency and Effectiveness Concerns (GAO/T-HEHS-98-46, Nov.  6,
1997). 

Safe and Drug-Free Schools:  Balancing Accountability With State and
Local Flexibility (GAO/HEHS-98-3, Oct.  10, 1997). 

Managing for Results:  Using the Results Act to Address Mission
Fragmentation and Program Overlap (GAO/AIMD-97-146, Aug.  29, 1997). 

Student Financial Aid Information:  Systems Architecture Needed to
Improve Programs' Efficiency (GAO/AIMD-97-122, July 29, 1997). 

The Results Act:  Observations on the Department of Education's June
1997 Draft Strategic Plan (GAO/HEHS-97-176R, July 18, 1997). 

Department of Education:  Challenges in Promoting Access and
Excellence in Education (GAO/T-HEHS-97-99, Mar.  20, 1997). 

High-Risk Series:  Student Financial Aid (GAO/HR-97-11, Feb.  1997). 

Department of Education:  Status of Actions to Improve the Management
of Student Financial Aid (GAO/HEHS-96-143, July 12, 1996). 

Executive Guide:  Effectively Implementing the Government Performance
and Results Act (GAO/GGD-96-118, June 1996). 

Financial Audit:  Federal Family Education Loan Program's Financial
Statements for Fiscal Years 1994 and 1993 (GAO/AIMD-96-22, Feb.  26,
1996). 


*** End of document. ***