In its 2001 performance and accountability report on the Department of Education, the General Accounting Office (GAO) identified challenges with student financial-aid programs, financial management, and other areas facing education. The information presented in this report is intended to help sustain congressional attention and a departmental focus on continuing to make progress in addressing and overcoming these challenges and new ones that have arisen due to legislative changes since 2001. Problems identified include vulnerability of student-aid programs to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. Challenges that are being addressed, but cannot be assessed yet because implementation has just begun, include improving student achievement and teacher quality, transforming education into an evidence-based field, linking federal funding to accountability for results, and assisting and monitoring states and school districts' efforts to meet requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The report contains a list of GAO contacts, related GAO products, and a list of GAO performance, accountability, and high-risk series. (RT)