U.S. Department of Education Office of Innovation's failure to monitor federal spending

“Audit: US oversight of charter school funds lax; Audit assails US education department's monitoring of federal spending on charter schools.” Corrected version, Associated Press, 11/1/2012

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An audit of the U.S. Department of Education's division overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in charter school funding has criticized the office for failing to properly monitor how states spend the money.

The report released in late September by the department's inspector general also singled out state education departments in California, Florida and Arizona for lax monitoring of what charter schools do with the funds and whether their expenditures comply with federal regulations.

The education department's Office of Innovation and Improvement spent $940 million from 2008 to 2011 on charter schools, which are autonomously operated public schools. Most of the money is funneled through state education departments, although some is given directly to charter schools...

The inspector general said the innovation office has not given proper guidance to states on monitoring the use of the money and does not have policies to ensure that states corrected deficiencies when they were found...