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Tutoring Services—Minimum Standards

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) compels struggling school systems to divert millions of dollars to independent tutoring services.
Under NCLB, schools that receive Title I funding and fail to achieve “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) for two consecutive years must allow students to transfer to other schools. Schools that fail to meet AYP targets for a third year must offer “supplemental services”—afterschool tutoring—to students from low-income families. School districts must set aside up to 20 percent of their Title I budgets to pay for transfers and tutoring.1 During the 2004-05 school year, school districts around the country spent about a half-billion dollars to provide services to 430,000 students.2
Private tutoring companies are draining Title I school funds.
Three-fourths of the approximately 1,700 tutoring providers that receive Title I funds are for-profit companies like Sylvan Learning, Edison Schools and Princeton Review.3 For these companies—which charge up to $40 per hour per student—business is booming. Enrollment with the tutoring company Platform Learning, for example, skyrocketed from 1,000 students in 2003 to 50,000 in 2005.4 Because only about ten percent of students eligible for paid tutoring are actually enrolled, these companies’ potential profits are enormous.5
There is scant evidence that tutoring company services actually increase academic achievement.
Although it is widely accepted that after-school programs benefit students, there is little or no empirical evidence that the tutoring services required by NCLB increase low-income students’ scores on standardized tests or otherwise improve academic achievement.6
NCLB provides no minimum standards for tutoring company programs.
Standards have been touted as a vital component of NCLB—but there are no meaningful federal standards for tutoring services. In fact, these programs are often inadequately staffed and poorly designed. NCLB required that all teachers be “highly qualified” by September 2006, but tutors need not be qualified at all.7 A study by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found that most tutoring programs are not integrated with classroom curricula and that very few tutors communicate effectively with teachers.8 NCLB doesn’t even require that tutors communicate with students face-to-face—online tutoring is permitted, and some companies may soon outsource NCLB tutoring to India.9
Tutoring companies are not held accountable for their services.
A study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that few school districts have evaluated the quality of the tutoring services they buy; those that have attempted evaluations generally relied on faulty information.10 For example, many school districts allow private tutoring companies to assess their own effectiveness based on internal tests, not the standardized tests required by NCLB.
States can set their own minimum standards for tutoring services.
Federal law explicitly authorizes states to “develop and apply objective criteria” for tutoring services “based on a demonstrated record of effectiveness in increasing the academic proficiency of students in subjects relevant to meeting” NCLB standards.11 State education agencies have used this authority to mandate some minimum standards, but most states stand aside as hundreds of companies with questionable records take advantage of lucrative tutoring contracts at the expense of low-income at-risk children.
States should require that tutoring companies coordinate with classroom teachers, employ well-qualified tutors, and demonstrate their effectiveness through state-approved tests.
Illinois has implemented strong standards for tutoring services. Other states should follow Illinois’ lead and require:
  • Coordination—Tutoring providers should clearly demonstrate that their programs are aligned with state learning standards and coordinated with classroom instruction.
  • Qualifications—At a minimum, tutors should meet NCLB requirements for paraprofessionals—that is, a high school diploma or equivalent and the completion of two years of college-level study. In addition, tutors who teach more than five students at a time should have experience in classroom management.
  • Effectiveness—Tutoring companies should provide evidence that their students achieve significant improvements on the state tests used as assessments for NCLB, compared against an appropriate control group.
Endnotes
  1. No Child Left Behind Act, § 1116(e), enacted 2001.
  2. U.S. Government Accountability Office, “No Child Left Behind Act: Education Actions Needed to Improve Local Implementation and State Evaluation of Supplemental Education Services,” August 2006.
  3. Center on Education Policy, “From the Capital to the Classroom: Year 3 of the No Child Left Behind Act,” March 2005, figure 5-A (excluding school districts which do not qualify for these funds).
  4. “Tutoring Services See Business Boom,” District Administration: The Magazine for K-12 Education Leaders, September 2005.
  5. Ibid.
  6. Gail Sunderman and Jimmy Kim, “Increasing Bureaucracy or Increasing Opportunities? School District Experience with Supplemental Services,” The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, February 2004.
  7. Susan Saulny, “A Lucrative Brand of Tutoring Grows Unchecked,” New York Times, April 4, 2005.
  8. “Increasing Bureaucracy or Increasing Opportunities?”
  9. Anupreeta Das and Amanda Paulson, “Need a Tutor? Call India,” Christian Science Monitor, May 23, 2005; Greg Toppo, “Offshore learning online: Overseas tutors help students in USA,” USA Today, August 30, 2005.
  10. “No Child Left Behind Act: Education Actions Needed to Improve Local Implementation and State Evaluation of Supplemental Education Services.”
  11. No Child Left Behind Act, § 1116(e)(4), enacted 2001.
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