EDITORIAL: Schools Have No Time for Tutors

By Chicago Tribune

Jun. 5–In Chicago’s public schools, 230,000 students qualified to receive free tutoring this year under the federal No Child Left Behind law. Only 66,500 actually got help. Those numbers look pretty bad, but compared with other cities around the country, they’re outstanding.

“Chicago should be the poster child for other school districts for how to do it right,” said Steve Pines, executive director of the Education Industry Association, a lobbying group for private tutoring companies. “They have waiting lists. They’ve done a great job making parents aware of the opportunity.”

“Great job” appears to be a relative term. Four years after the education reform law took effect, thousands of students eligible for help aren’t getting it. About 2 million students nationwide qualified this past school year to get tutoring, but only 10 percent to 20 percent got it, said officials with the U.S. Department of Education.

Why? Many school administrators resist the law. They also know the law lacks teeth.

In Broward County, Fla., schools Supt. Frank Till wrote, in an April 19 letter to parents of children in failing schools, “We feel strongly that these funds can be much better spent helping students in the classroom.” The letter was supposed to inform parents of options–tutoring or transportation to another school–not to dissuade them from taking advantage of their options. About 30,000 Broward public school students were eligible for tutoring this past school year–only about 250 received it. No surprise.

Los Angeles Unified School District spent less than a quarter of the $86 million it received this past year to provide tutoring to students, Pines said. About 132,000 students were eligible for after-school services, yet only 20,000 received the help. Private tutoring companies repeatedly are denied use of classrooms after school, said Jeffrey Cohen, president of Catapult Learning, one of the nation’s largest private tutoring firms. Cohen said Los Angeles officials claim every classroom is occupied by district-run after-school activities.

NCLB calls on districts that don’t make adequate yearly progress on standardized tests to spend a fifth of their Title 1 federal poverty grant money on tutoring. (Schools also are supposed to spend the money sending children to better-performing schools, but fewer than 1 percent of students nationwide have transferred.)

You say the feds won’t pay for it? Title 1 funding has increased nearly 50 percent since No Child Left Behind went into effect.

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings sent a letter May 15 to state education officials warning that “we are prepared to take significant enforcement action” against continued foot-dragging. That could mean requiring extra paperwork or program conditions, entering binding agreements or even withholding federal funds. It’s about time.

Tutoring has the potential, if done right, to benefit students significantly. It’s up to states to carefully evaluate and monitor tutoring companies for effectiveness, but tutoring programs won’t work if schools continue to resist simply because they would rather control the money than give it to private companies.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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