State Wants to Grade Private Tutor Services

By Tara Malone Daily Herald Staff Writer

The high-stakes federal No Child Left Behind law opened a door to private tutors working in struggling schools, and state education officials Wednesday looked to close it.

Private education companies would be graded on everything from their academic merits to student attendance to per-child profits, according to a plan unveiled during an Illinois State Board of Education meeting.

False billing, questionable ethics or two years of lackluster student scores could jettison a tutoring outfit from the list of state-vetted providers, the proposal shows. But that may not be quick enough, some cautioned.

“Certainly if we see a pattern, I’m not sure I’m willing to run out there three or four years with a provider before I say, ‘Take the road,” said board member Joyce Karon of Barrington.

The heightened oversight puts Illinois at the forefront of a national debate about how much latitude private companies may have in public classrooms.

“It’s a market that is growing, absolutely,” said Adam Newman, vice president of research and client services with Eduventures Inc., a Boston-based market research firm. “Five years ago, it didn’t have the kind of impetus behind it.”

The all-or-nothing federal law gave the push. The 2001 No Child Left Behind law required schools to provide private tutors if students tested below grade level for three years. To pay for it, districts reserved some 15 percent of their federal funding for low- income children.

Not surprisingly, then, tutoring and test prep companies, like Kaplan, Sylvan, SCORE! and others, netted $879 million in profits nationwide last year, market research shows. Industry profits are expected to eclipse $1 billion this year.

Suburban school districts fattened the tutoring industries’ bottom line.

Yet finding private tutors to work with students after school who are new to English is no easier than finding bilingual teachers to work with such students during school, many suburban educators say.

In Elgin Area School District U-46, four schools partnered with Club Z Tutoring Service to provide after-school help to 180 low- income students at an estimated $1,198 a child. But district teachers are the ones doing the tutoring.

Because the state’s second-largest school district did not bring all student groups up to state standards for two years, U-46 cannot use federal funds to tutor its own kids.

Instead, the private company – in this case, Club Z – pockets the federal money denied U-46.

“We pay for outside people to hire our own teachers, and it costs us more money,” Superintendent Connie Neale said.

Chicago Public Schools faced a similar ban but this year received a waiver from federal education officials.

State board member Vinni Hall voiced similar concerns.

“You’re taking money from a school district that may be able to help students to make a difference in their lives,” Hall said.