NCLB Tutoring Fiasco and Corporate Giveaway

Desperate public schools being held accountable for test results use their own Title One federal funds to give to tutoring companies that are not held accountable for results. Sound like a Bush plan?? Just part of it.

From USA Today:

Program costs up to $2.6 billion a year but shows few gains.

Back in 2001, when the No Child Left Behind law was being crafted, President Bush wanted students from failing schools to get vouchers to attend private schools. The idea was that this would help the students and put pressure on the schools to improve. But Democrats, fearing that public education would be undermined, hated that idea. So a compromise emerged: Students whose schools repeatedly fell short of performance goals would be eligible for free tutoring, courtesy of federal taxpayers.

Six years later, hundreds of thousands of students across the USA are receiving such tutoring. No one knows exactly how many. Estimates range from 450,000 to 600,000. Nor does anyone have a handle on the costs. Estimates range from $700 million to as much as $2.6 billion a year.

In everyday terms, that means every man, woman and child in the country is contributing $2 to $9 annually for a program that for all its good intentions is poorly administered and shows scant evidence of effectiveness.

That's not to say tutoring is a bad idea. Watching effective school tutoring — such as the "book buddies" program designed by the University of Virginia — is akin to viewing fine ballet in action, with a series of carefully choreographed interactions among students, tutors and regular teachers. By contrast, many of the federally financed tutoring programs under No Child Left Behind resemble a clumsy polka.

The tutoring providers are a mishmash of non-profits, for-profits, local school districts and faith-based organizations. Classroom instruction and tutoring are often misaligned, according to numerous education researchers, think tank studies and news reports. Time gets wasted when tutors don't show up. Overly large tutoring sessions of 10 or even 15 students per teacher produce no gains. Services are scarce for special education or limited-English students.

Sometimes this leads to scandal: In Georgia, one tutoring company was caught paying students $5 to forge parents' signatures for non-existent sessions.

Next week, the U.S. Department of Education will release a report citing schools with successful tutoring programs. No doubt some exist. But much more is needed to ensure that students are benefiting and that federal taxpayers are getting their money's worth:

* Real accountability. States are charged with oversight, but most struggle to tell the good from the bad, according to Congress' Government Accountability Office. The only true measure is proof of learning.

* Research-based programs. Schools are not required to use tutoring programs that have been proven effective. In the absence of that, fly-by-night outfits have moved into some schools, recruiting students by handing out gifts.

Defenders of tutoring argue that states are starting to assert accountability over the program. And they argue that you can't measure improvements when a child gets only 40 or so hours a year of tutoring. Their solution is more of the same, which is a very hard sell.

If a program can't be proven effective, it should lose the money. There are other ways to help those kids, who remain very much in need.