In fiscal year 2009, the federal government spent over $4 billion specifically to improve the quality of our nation’s 3 million teachers through numerous programs across the government. Teacher quality can be enhanced through a variety of activities, including training, recruitment, and curriculum and assessment tools. In turn, these activities can influence student learning and ultimately improve the global competitiveness of the American workforce in a knowledge-based economy. Federal efforts to improve teacher quality have led to the creation and expansion of a variety of programs across the federal government. However, there is no governmentwide strategy to minimize fragmentation, overlap, or potential duplication among these programs. Specifically, GAO identified 82 distinct programs designed to help improve teacher quality, either as a primary purpose or as an allowable activity, administered across 10 federal agencies. Many of these programs share similar goals. For example, 9 of the 82 programs support improving the quality of teaching in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM subjects) and these programs alone are administered across the Departments of Education, Defense, and Energy; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and the National Science Foundation. Further, in fiscal year 2010, the majority (53) of the programs GAO identified supporting teacher quality improvements received $50 million or less in funding and many have their own separate administrative processes. The proliferation of programs has resulted in fragmentation that can frustrate agency efforts to administer programs in a comprehensive manner, limit the ability to determine which programs are most cost effective, and ultimately increase program costs. For example, eight different Education offices administer over 60 of the federal programs supporting teacher quality improvements, primarily in the form of competitive grants. Education officials believe that federal programs have failed to make significant progress in helping states close achievement gaps between schools serving students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, because, in part, federal programs that focus on teaching and learning of specific subjects are too fragmented to help state and district officials strengthen instruction and increase student achievement in a comprehensive manner. While Education officials noted, and GAO concurs, that a mixture of programs can target services to underserved populations and yield strategic innovations, the current programs are not structured in a way that enables educators and policymakers to identify the most effective practices to replicate. According to Education officials, it is typically not cost-effective to allocate the funds necessary to conduct rigorous evaluations of small programs; therefore, small programs are unlikely to be evaluated. Finally, it is more costly to administer multiple separate federal programs because each program has its own policies, applications, award competitions, reporting requirements, and, in some cases, federal evaluations. While all of the 82 federal programs GAO identified support teacher quality improvement efforts, several overlap in that they share more than one key program characteristic. For example, teacher quality programs may overlap if they share similar objectives, serve similar target groups, or fund similar activities. GAO previously reported that 23 of the programs administered by Education in fiscal year 2009 had improving teacher quality as a specific focus, which suggested that there may be overlap among these and other programs that have teacher quality improvements as an allowable activity. When looking across a broader set of criteria, GAO found that 14 of the programs administered by Education overlapped with another program with regard to allowable activities as well as shared objectives and target groups (see fig. 1). For example, the Transition to Teaching program and Teacher Quality Partnership Grant program can both be used to fund similar teacher preparation activities through institutions of higher education for the purpose of helping individuals from nonteaching fields become qualified to teach. Although there is overlap among these programs, several factors make it difficult to determine whether there is unnecessary duplication. First, when similar teacher quality activities are funded through different programs and delivered by different entities, some overlap can occur unintentionally, but is not necessarily wasteful. For example, a local school district could use funds from the Foreign Language Assistance program to pay for professional development for a teacher who will be implementing a new foreign language course, and this teacher could also attend a summer seminar on best practices for teaching the foreign language at a Language Resource Center. Second, by design, individual teachers may benefit from federally funded training or financial support at different points in their careers. Specifically, the teacher from this example could also receive teacher certification through a program funded by the Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow program. Further, both broad and narrowly targeted programs exist simultaneously, meaning that the same teacher who receives professional development funded from any one or more of the above three programs might also receive professional development that is funded through Title I, Part A of ESEA. The actual content of these professional development activities may differ though, since the primary goal of each program is different. In this example, it would be difficult to know whether the absence of any one of these programs would make a difference in terms of the teacher’s ability to teach the new language effectively. In addition, our larger body of work on federal education programs has also found a wide array of programs with similar objectives, target populations, and services across multiple federal agencies. This includes a number of efforts to catalogue and determine how much is spent on a wide variety of federally funded education programs. For example: In 2010, we reported that the federal government provided an estimated $166.9 billion over the 3-year period during fiscal years 2006 to 2008 to administer 151 different federal K-12 and early childhood education programs. In 2005, we identified 207 federal education programs that support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) administered by 13 federal civilian agencies. In past work, GAO and Education’s Inspector General have concluded that improved planning and coordination could help Education better leverage expertise and limited resources, and to anticipate and develop options for addressing potential problems among the multitude of programs it administers. Generally, GAO has reported that uncoordinated program efforts can waste scarce funds, confuse and frustrate program customers, and limit the overall effectiveness of the federal effort. GAO identified key practices that can help enhance and sustain collaboration among federal agencies which include establishing mutually reinforcing or joint strategies to achieve the outcome; identifying and addressing needs by leveraging resources; agreeing upon agency roles and responsibilities; establishing compatible policies, procedures, and other means to operate across agency boundaries; developing mechanisms to monitor, evaluate, and report on the results of collaborative efforts; reinforcing agency accountability for collaborative efforts through agency plans and reports; and reinforcing individual accountability for collaborative efforts through agency performance management systems. In 2009, GAO recommended that the Secretary of Education work with other agencies as appropriate to develop a coordinated approach for routinely and systematically sharing information that can assist federal programs, states, and local providers in achieving efficient service delivery. Education has established working groups to help develop more effective collaboration across Education offices, and has reached out to other agencies to develop a framework for sharing information on some teacher quality activities, but it has noted that coordination efforts do not always prove useful and cannot fully eliminate barriers to program alignment, such as programs with differing definitions for similar populations of grantees, which create an impediment to coordination. However, given the large number of teacher quality programs and the extent of overlap, it is unlikely that improved coordination alone can fully mitigate the effects of the fragmented and overlapping federal effort. In our work we have identified multiple barriers to collaboration, including the conflicting missions of agencies; challenges reaching consensus on priorities; and incompatible procedures, processes, data, and computer systems. As this Subcommittee considers its annual spending priorities, it may be an opportune time to consider options for addressing fragmentation and overlap among federal teacher quality programs and what is known about how well these programs are achieving their objectives. As you consider options for how to address fragmentation, overlap, and potential duplication, I would like to highlight three approaches for you to consider: 1. enhancing program evaluations and performance information; 2. fostering coordination and strategic planning for program areas that span multiple federal agencies; and 3. consolidating existing programs. Information about the effectiveness of programs can help guide policymakers and program managers in making tough decisions about how to prioritize the use of scarce resources and improve the efficiency of existing programs. However, there can be many challenges to obtaining this information. For example, it may not be cost-effective to allocate the funds necessary to conduct rigorous evaluations of the many small programs and, as a result, these programs are unlikely to be evaluated. As we have reported, many programs, especially smaller programs, have not been evaluated, which can limit the ability of Congress to make informed decisions about which programs to continue, expand, modify, consolidate, or eliminate. For example: In 2009, we also reported that while evaluations have been conducted, or are under way, for about two-fifths of the 23 teacher quality programs we identified, little is known about the extent to which most programs are achieving their desired results. In 2010, GAO reported that there were 151 different federal K-12 and early childhood education programs but that more than half of these programs have not been evaluated, including 8 of the 20 largest programs, which together account for about 90 percent of total funding for these programs. Recognizing the importance of program evaluations, as part of its high priority performance goals in its 2011 budget and performance plan, Education has proposed implementation of a comprehensive approach to inform its policies and major initiatives. Specifically, it has proposed to 1) increase by two-thirds the number of its discretionary programs that use evaluation, performance measures, and other program data, 2) implement rigorous evaluations of its highest priority programs and initiatives, and 3) ensure that newly authorized discretionary programs include a rigorous evaluation component. However, Education has noted that linking performance of specific outcomes to federal education programs is complicated. For example, federal education funds often support state or local efforts, making it difficult to assess the federal contribution to performance of specific outcomes, and it can be difficult to isolate the effect of a single program given the multitude of programs that could potentially affect outcomes. There are also governmentwide strategies that may play an important role.