Commercial tutoring providers weigh in with proposed changes to NCLB
As the U.S. Congress gears up to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), commercial tutoring providers are weighing in with proposed changes to the act’s provision requiring underperforming public schools to offer students supplemental educational services (SES), typically tutoring. They are calling on Congress to streamline the sign-up process; give states and districts money to monitor and evaluate those services; and take steps to make sure districts actually spend money for tutoring on tutoring. The SES provision has traveled a bumpy road since NCLB’s inception five years ago. According to a recent analysis by Eduventures, a firm that tracks the education market, only 23% of eligible students, or 585,000 out of 2.5 million, received NCLB tutoring in 2005-06. Many tutoring services have struggled to provide their services in an environment they contend is hostile to providers and laden with bureaucratic red tape. The Education Industry Association (EIA), a 500-member organization representing tutoring and other education services companies, has a 28-member committee considering proposals for amending SES policy, which it plans to present the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and Congress.
Some tutoring companies say they have been frustrated by districts that have failed to notify parents of tutoring services, have made parents complete multiple forms to enroll, and have prevented providers from tutoring students in school buildings. For their part, districts contend they have faced problems communicating with tutoring providers, according to report last August by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Some companies, for instance, did not contact teachers in order to align the firms’ after-hours programs with the schools’ own curricula, according to the GAO. And 23% of districts surveyed for the report said that some, most, or all of their SES providers did not submit attendance data regularly.
Among EIA’s top priorities are simplifying the student-enrollment process by requiring only one online form; addressing complications for signing up for online tutoring services; ensuring earlier districts notification to parents of tutoring options; and earmarking a small percentage of federal Title I funds for administering, monitoring, and evaluating NCLB tutoring; requiring districts to spend funds targeted for SES on such services or, if they fail to do so, to document their good-faith efforts to do so and use the funds for the following year’s tutoring, instead of allowing districts to redirect unused tutoring funds to other needs. The framers of the SES provision "underestimated the reluctance" of some districts to spend those funds on after-school tutoring, says Nina S. Rees, a former assistant deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education who oversaw SES implementation and now is a senior vice president at a New York-based SES provider.
Education Week
By Rhea R. Borja
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: The GAO report is available at the first link below. In November 2006 a disgruntled tutoring provider sued Detroit Public Schools (DPS). For background on that and other SES disputes, see the second link. The third link is to a report by NSBA’s Advocacy office putting the statistics on SES participation rates into context and recommending that eligibility for SES be limited to those students who belong to sub-groups that actually are failing to make academic progress.]
[NSBA School Law pages on GAO report]
[NSBA School Law pages on suit against DPS]
[NSBA "Why Report" on SES]