Issues on Formula Grants: The application process for the title IID Formula funds has created a substantial amount of process work for the program staff (in New York I am the office for oversight). As a result, it is hard to engage in in-depth and meaningful technical assistance and monitoring. It is difficult to enforce the requirements from the NCLB/EETT Legislation and program guide for most of the schools with a small amount of funds. The guideline and requirement for accountability measures were not introduced at the beginning of the program, which make it very difficult for state ed tech office to make up the evaluation efforts at a later stage, two or three years after the initiation of the program.
Issues on Competitive Grants: For New York, this is the first year of three-year competitive grant program. Adequate staffing at the state and continuous funding at the original level would help. We recently went through a single audit process and the auditors did not even mention the lack of staffing in support of the program implementation and monitoring.
Commentary on Dual Funding Structure (Formula and Competitive):
The dual funding structure:
hinders
has no impact
helps
Reach the program’s goals:
•
Allocate funds to high need populations
•
Equitably distribute program funds
•
Efficiently administer the program
•
Assess the program’s impact
•
Change classroom practice
•
Comments: Due to the nature of automatic distribution, there is a sense of entitlement and little sense of accountability, especially when there was no clear sense of accountability measures and report requirement for allocation funds. In addition, the amount of funds spread so widely would not amount to a substantial size to engage in meaningful programming
