WASHINGTON -- California must do a better job at targeting its migrant education efforts, federal auditors say in a new report.
With more than 250,000 migrant students now enrolled in California schools, the bad grade matters. And with the state absorbing one-third of the nation's entire migrant education budget, California can also be certain federal monitors will keep watching carefully.

"The U.S. Department of Education has no assurance that California (properly allocated) the $120.9 million in migrant education funds it received for fiscal year 2001," auditors with the Education Department's Office of Inspector General noted.

California also was "unable to report an accurate number" of the highest-priority migrant education students, the auditors added.

The new audit comes as educators and lawmakers try to ensure migrant education funds go where they're most needed. That has always been challenging, as language barriers and transitory migrant families complicate keeping an accurate census. Eligibility questions can also become tricky once a migrant farm worker family settles down.

"There's a range of needs the students have, so we have to make sure we're targeting the most at-risk students," Reuben Patron, migrant education director in Merced County, said Tuesday.

Patron oversees the region that serves 19,000 migrant education students in Stanislaus, Madera and Merced counties.

"I don't think the money has kept up with the demand," he said, echoing a sentiment expressed by other migrant education professionals.

Migrant education operations serving the Sacramento Valley were among those visited by federal auditors, who say none of the local education agencies they visited "had procedures in place to properly identify and target migratory children."

California officials, while disputing some of the audit's findings, agreed to make revisions.

"My perception is that the state is taking the federal audit seriously," Fresno County Superintendent of Schools Pete Mehas said Tuesday. "I feel relatively confident that our money is going to the intended purpose."

Mehas noted that Fresno County, which serves 30,000 migrant students, recently passed a rigorous state-level review of its own. California Department of Education officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment Tuesday.

Congress first established the migrant education program in 1966, with hopes of improving the lot of students whose families followed the produce-picking seasons. The program pays for reading, math and English as a second language instruction, as well as social work and health assistance.

The aid targets students who moved across school district boundaries within the past three years.

That can become an issue, because of how the migrant farm worker population is changing.

"We're getting kids who are migrants, but they're staying in place longer" beyond the 36-month eligibility limit, Mehas noted. "Before, we used to get a heavily transitory population."

Congress sought to tighten the focus with the so-called No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which reauthorized a variety of federal education programs.

Lawmakers now require states to give top priority to migrant students who are failing or are at risk of failing state standards, as well as those whose education was interrupted during the school year.

California, auditors said, "did not comply" with the new requirement to "establish and implement appropriate procedures to identify and target" these top-priority migrant students.

Auditors said California also "overstated" the number of top-priority migrant students, with more than 80 percent of the state's migrant students being given the highest priority.

The auditors recommended the state improve its monitoring of local school agencies, and establish the clear definitions and procedures that would ensure money was properly spent. California officials said they are doing so.