| Abstrakt: |
Beginning with the Improving America's Schools Act in 1994, and continuing through the Education Flexibility Partnership Act of 1999 and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), the authorization of special forms of flexibility for grantees has been a focus of federal K-12 education legislation. These flexibility authorities apply primarily to programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the largest source of federal aid to K-12 education. In general, federal K-12 education assistance program requirements include activities or outcomes that state or local educational agencies (SEAs, LEAs) are expected to provide or achieve in order to establish accountability for use of funds consistent with the purposes of authorizing statutes. These requirements are usually intended to provide target accountability, ensuring that funds are focused on eligible localities, pupils, and purposes; outcome accountability, ensuring that funds are used effectively to improve student achievement and improve the quality of K-12 instruction; and fiscal accountability, ensuring financial integrity and providing that federal funds constitute a net increase in resources. Special flexibility authorities allow exceptions to these general requirements; they include Ed-Flex, Secretarial case-by-case waivers, ESEA Title I-A schoolwide programs, flexibility for small rural LEAs, the Innovative Programs block grant, Transferability authority, plus the State and Local Flexibility Demonstration Program (State-Flex and Local-Flex). In general, these authorities: (a) increase the ability of states or LEAs to use federal aid more completely in accordance with their own priorities; (b) are significantly limited in terms of the number of states and LEAs that may participate, the number and size of the programs affected, or the range of requirements that may be waived; (c) sometimes require a degree of accountability based on pupil achievement outcomes in return for increased. . . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
