The U.S. General Accounting Office has refused to withdraw a report that contains warped data about Utah - and apparently about some other states - but has acknowledged Utah's concerns.
The report suggests that Utah uses almost one in five of the dollars it receives for federal programs for administrative costs.Utah education leaders have forcefully denied the report's conclusions and say they will not cooperate with GAO reports in the future unless the state can be assured more accuracy.
After a meeting this week with the majority of Utah's congressional delegation, including Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett and Reps. Bill Orton and Jim Hansen, a GAO representative said the report will not be withdrawn.
But in Utah, education officials felt they had made a point.
"The GAO has been given a black eye, and deserves it," said State Superintendent Scott W. Bean.
He told members of the State Board of Education that Utah began to question the report's conclusions after the Deseret News asked about the Utah data.
Other states also are looking at the data, he said. A letter he is sending to the Association of Chief State School Officers explaining Utah's discontent with the report will be shared with all other state superintendents.
In a letter to the GAO, Hatch said that he felt that a review of the report would show that data had been misapplied and that the conclusions are "very misleading." He told the agency it had compared "oranges and apples."
"The failure to count the same programs across all states when computing state averages for comparison is a mistake one does not expect from the GAO," he said.
In arriving at a bottom line for Utah, the GAO had included funding for vocational rehabilitation, none of which is sent to districts. The inclusion significantly raised the total amount of money that appeared to remain in the State Office of Education for administrative costs.
Maine's education department administers a teacher retirement program that was factored into its data. Such variances in the responsibilities given to state education departments made the data incomparable, said Deputy Superintendent Laurie Chivers.
The GAO ignored detailed information that Utah attached to its data, explaining some of the variances, she said.
The purpose of the report was not even met, Chivers added. The data were supposed to be used by Congress in its debate regarding reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The act was passed before the report was released.