A damning federal investigation has exposed "gross negligence" within the Trump-era Education Department, revealing a systemic failure to oversee a $1.7 million grant designed to support non-English speaking students.
The report, from the department's own Office of the Inspector General (OIG), concludes that officials under former Secretary Betsy DeVos breached their legal duty to monitor the five-year award to the WIDA consortium. This neglect created a significant risk that taxpayer money could have been misused without detection.
A Fundamental Failure of Duty
Federal law mandates that grant-making agencies must act as stewards of public funds, actively monitoring awards to ensure they are used for their intended purpose. The OIG found that the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE) completely disregarded this responsibility.
Investigators discovered that officials could not even produce basic monitoring documentation. There was no evidence of required annual performance reports, desk reviews, or risk assessments for the WIDA grant, which was tasked with developing crucial identification tools for young English learners.
DeVos Officials Left No Paper Trail
The lack of oversight was so profound that the OIG was unable to determine why the failure occurred. "We could not determine why OESE did not monitor the WIDA grant because it could not provide any documentation, and OESE staff who had been responsible for the grant could not recall why monitoring had not been done," the report stated.
This absence of a paper trail and institutional memory points to a culture of severe mismanagement and a dereliction of duty at the highest levels of the agency tasked with protecting vulnerable students.
Current Leadership Condemns Predecessors
In a blistering response, the current Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, did not hold back. He stated the report "underscores the gross negligence of the previous administration's management of critical grant funds."
He emphasised that his department has since implemented a robust new monitoring system to prevent such a failure from ever happening again, signalling a clear break from the practices of the past.
Vulnerable Students Put at Risk
At its core, this failure harmed the very students the grant was meant to help. English learners are among the most vulnerable populations in the US education system. The inability to properly identify them for support services can have lifelong consequences on their academic achievement and future opportunities.
This squandered grant, funded by taxpayers, was a vital tool in addressing that need, and its mismanagement represents a profound betrayal of trust.
