April 6, 2006
Few Students Seek Free Tutoring or Transfers From Failing Schools
By SUSAN SAULNY, NY TIMES

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Only a small fraction of public school students who were eligible last year for free tutoring or for transfers out of failing schools under federal law received those options, the Department of Education reported yesterday. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings threatened to withhold federal money from states that did not make students aware of their choices.

The department, in a wide-ranging assessment of student achievement under President Bush's signature education law, No Child Left Behind, found that only 17 percent of eligible students signed up for free tutoring in the last school year. And of the four million students who could have transferred out of struggling schools, only 38,000  fewer than 1 percent  did. That was a step up from the year before but far from what was envisioned under the law.

Ms. Spellings pointed to the disappointing results yesterday as she toured a Christian school in Queens, where she lent support to Gov. George E. Pataki's bid to lift a state-imposed cap on the number of charter schools, which are run privately but receive public funds.

She also put her support behind Mr. Pataki's proposal  rejected by the Legislature  to provide a tax credit for children who live in failing school districts that could be used on tutoring, after-school programs and tuition at parochial and other private schools. Supporters of the tax credit hope to revive the proposal.

In a speech that made references to Biblical themes, Ms. Spellings spoke of a "day of reckoning" for states and school districts. She delivered her remarks in a church basement, framed by a backdrop that said, "More Choices for Parents."

"More than half of school districts didn't even tell parents that their children were eligible for these options until after the school year had already started," she said, referring to transfers. "That delay makes it virtually impossible for students to transfer schools without disrupting their education. And that's unacceptable."

She continued: "We want to ensure that districts are living up to their responsibilities to notify parents about their options in a timely and easy to understand way. And there are a number of steps we can take to enforce these provisions, including withholding federal funds." She did not elaborate beyond saying she had instructed a high-level education official to monitor the states.

The No Child Left Behind law requires consistently failing schools that serve mostly poor children to offer their students a choice if they want it: a new school or tutoring from private companies or other groups, paid for with federal money.

While Ms. Spellings highlighted a lack of parental notification about the options, critics of the programs, including parents and some academics, say another reason children do not transfer out of failing schools is that they do not have many options other than similarly failing schools.

As for tutoring, some critics say, the quality of the programs varies so wildly that some parents feel the free classes  which cost the government as much as $1,800 a child  are not worth the time. And many programs have not penetrated the toughest neighborhoods.

The report released yesterday said that half the states had not yet established any standards for evaluating the effectiveness of the private companies and other groups that provide tutoring under the law.

Ms. Spellings praised No Child Left Behind for "shining a spotlight" on what works and what does not, and said its focus on data-driven decision making was a sea change in Education Department practice. "And we're sharing this information with parents," she said. "I like to say, 'In God we trust, all others bring data.' "

The document the department released yesterday included many stark facts about how the states were progressing under No Child Left Behind, now four years old.

For instance, the law set a goal of having all students performing at their grade levels by 2014 in subjects like reading and math. According to the report, "based on trend data for 20 states, most would not meet the goal of 100 percent proficiency by 2013-14 unless the percentage of students achieving at the proficient level increased at a faster rate."

The report also said that the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and other students might be narrowing, but that recent changes were small. And the report said that the high school graduation rate "has been fairly level" since 1996, with the mean graduation rate at 73 percent.

"The scary part is before No Child Left Behind, we had no idea what we were getting," Ms. Spellings said. "We could just see the system wasn't working. Now we know for the first time exactly what we are getting from our schools."

Fact Sheets on School Choice

From the E-Accountability Foundation:

We want to thank Secretary Spellings for highlighting the problem that plagues our system nationwide, and that is public school corruption. School districts that keep parents misinformed about what their options are when their children are in failing schools must be reprimanded for the education neglect caused by this misinformation.