Department of Education Waivers May Bring an End to NCLB Tutoring Program

With Congress still a long way from reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the Department of Education plans in the meantime to waive some of the law’s provisions in exchange for getting states to undertake reforms. The Department might issue such a waiver for one No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act program that is unpopular among states and school districts: supplemental educational services (SES).

Failing schools under NCLB must provide students with supplemental educational services, primarily implemented as tutoring outside of school time. Those schools are required to set aside up to twenty percent of their federal funds under Title I, Part A and use them to fund transportation for school choice students, tutoring, or a combination of both. Whatever portion of the set-aside is not used to cover eligible students can be reverted for use in other Title I activities. A tutoring industry official placed the estimate of federal dollars spent on tutoring in 2010 at about $650 million for 600,000 students, well below the total available amount ($2.55 billion in 2005, up from $1.75 billion in 2001 thanks to a jump in schools characterized by NCLB as “in need of improvement”).

Low participation rates, questions regarding the effectiveness of the program, and costs have all made the tutoring services controversial. Students have been slow to sign up for tutoring. A GAO report published in 2006 suggested that 20 percent of school districts that were required to provide in the 2005 school year had zero students participating. And despite multiple attempts by the school district to notify parents of the service, about half of districts still failed to notify them prior to the start of the school year.

Participation has been a persistent problem throughout the program’s existence, too.  A 2008 report from the Department of Education showed that in 2007, 2.4 million children were eligible to participate in SES, and only 446,000 did so. Today, over half a million students participate annually, but most still only receive 20 to 40 hours of tutoring in an entire school year, hardly enough time to make a significant impact on students’ achievement.

Studies have shown the limited effectiveness of the program. Relative to other Title I activities, one study found that the positive impact tutoring has on students’ achievement is very small. The same report also found that school districts’ programs tended to be more successful than outside providers were; yet as of 2007, only 40 percent of programs were administered by schools or school districts.

States’ abilities to monitor program effectiveness are also highly limited. States are required by the Department of Education to monitor SES programs, measure their impact, and remove from the list of authorized providers any who fail to demonstrate student achievement. But no federal funding is provided for any studies of the programs. Assessment of SES varies from state to state. In early 2006, the Government Accountability Office found that only two states – New Mexico and Tennessee – had managed to provide SES evaluation reports to the public, and only a few others were on their way to doing so.

Students have underutilized the tutoring program, but supplemental educational services have not demonstrated much impact on low-income students in low-performing schools. Tutoring services have set aside significant sums of money from the Title I allocations for each school, necessitating cuts to other activities than have been proven to be effective. The NCLB waivers offered by the Department of Education could end that cycle, allowing schools to pursue more effective routes to improving student achievement.