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GAO-13-655R 1 (2013-07-17)

handle is hein.gao/gaobaahdc0001 and id is 1 raw text is: G U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 July 17, 2013 The Honorable George Miller Ranking Member Committee on Education and the Workforce House of Representatives The Honorable Rail Grijalva House of Representatives Education Needs to Further Examine Data Collection on English Language Learners in Charter Schools Over the past decade, the number of students who are English Language Learners (ELLs) enrolled in U.S. public schools has grown substantially. At the same time, charter schools have expanded the educational options for ELLs and their families. As the number of charter schools continues to grow, questions have arisen about how charter schools-a relatively new phenomenon in public education that began in the 1990s-are serving special student populations, including ELLs. Following the completion of our study comparing the enrollment of students with disabilities in charter schools and traditional public schools, GAO began a similar study evaluating the enrollment of ELLs in charter schools and traditional public schools.1 As part of this study, we obtained a dataset from the U.S. Department of Education (Education) containing school-level data that could be used to compare ELL enrollment in charter schools to ELL enrollment in traditional public schools for school year 2010-11. This was the only dataset available at the time that could be used for our analysis. Further, while this dataset was designed to contain enrollment data only on ELLs in ELL programs, Education officials initially told us there was no reason to expect that charter schools would be less likely than other schools to report data for the dataset. In accordance with Government Auditing Standards and GAO policy, we assessed the quality of the ELL data as part of our study and found problems with the data's quality that prevented us from completing the study.2 This letter frames our findings concerning Education's data on ELL enrollment around two questions: (1) What is the quality of Education's data on ELLs in charter schools? and (2) What efforts has Education taken to improve its collection of ELL data from charter schools? We conducted this review from November 2012 to July 2013 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. See enclosure I for details on our scope and methodology. 1GAO, Charter Schools: Additional Federal Attention Needed to Help Protect Access for Students with Disabilities, GAO-12-543 (Washington, D.C.: June 7, 2012). 2See section 6.65 of Government Auditing Standards, 2011 Revision, GAO-12-331G (Washington, D.C.: December 2011).

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