The U.S. Department of Education’s suspension of a nationwide review process has left billions of dollars in K-12 funding at greater risk of undetected waste or abuse, while gaps in school attendance data are making it difficult to track chronic absenteeism, the Government Accountability Office said in a report released in 2026. The department told the congressional watchdog it halted consolidated monitoring of federal education requirements this year while developing a new approach. But as of August, it had not set a date for restarting reviews or explained what would replace them. Without systematic reviews, the department cannot reliably determine whether states are following federal requirements and their approved plans, GAO said. The lapse raises particular concerns for Title I, which provides grants to schools and districts serving high concentrations of students from low-income families. Title I accounted for about two-thirds of nearly $27 billion in Elementary and Secondary Education Act funding in 2025, according to the report. States receiving the money must maintain accountability systems, and all states are required to report chronic absenteeism data. The department defines chronic absenteeism as missing at least 10% of school days. GAO found that half of states had not been monitored for attendance-reporting requirements that apply nationwide. It also found that the federal method for calculating absenteeism can produce implausible results: states report the number of students who missed substantial class time over an entire school year but use enrollment figures from a single date. That mismatch has led some schools to report absenteeism rates above 100%, the report said. More than 30% of shared-time schools—where students divide their day among schools, often to attend career and technical education or other specialized programs—had implausible rates. The figure was below 2% for other schools. Problems were also more common among schools designated for Comprehensive Support and Improvement, a federal category for low-performing schools. Nearly 13% of those schools had reported rates above 100%, compared with about 2% of schools outside the category. The figures were especially pronounced in Pennsylvania, where GAO found implausible rates at 98% of shared-time schools. The watchdog found no shared-time schools with such rates in Delaware, Idaho, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina or Rhode Island. The data problems limit the ability of educators and policymakers to assess changes in absenteeism or determine whether school interventions are working, GAO said. Chronic absenteeism has remained elevated since the COVID-19 pandemic, with at least one-quarter of K-12 students estimated to have been chronically absent in recent years. The department’s monitoring process was fully implemented in 2019 before being suspended this year. The agency told GAO it was working on a replacement approach, but had not provided details or a timeline for resuming oversight.