Summary: Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO determined how many: (1) school districts used Emergency Immigrant Education Act of 1984 (EIEA) funds; (2) districts had EIEA-eligible students but received no EIEA funds; and (3) EIEA students participated in other federally funded education programs.
GAO found that: (1) school districts used about 80 percent of their EIEA funds to pay for expenses related to academic instructional programs, and the remaining 20 percent for student testing and counseling, parental involvement, and administrative services; (2) between school year 1989 and 1990, 700,000 immigrant students met EIEA program eligibility criteria, and about 524,000 of those students were in the 529 school districts that received EIEA funds; (3) the remaining 136,000 students were dispersed among an estimated 4,000 districts that did not receive EIEA funds; (4) about 90 percent of the unfunded school districts were ineligible for funds; and (5) the number of EIEA students participating in other federal programs ranged from 53,000 in the State Legalization Impact Assistance Grants Program to 370,000 in the Program for Educationally Disadvantaged Children.
