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October 21, 2004

Hub schools’ tutoring program in jeopardy

Jeremy Schwab

Thousands of Boston public school parents are expected to enroll their children in a free tutoring program this fall paid for by the Boston school department.

The program, mandated by the federal government, is aimed at helping students in schools with poor test scores.

Due to a clause in the federal No Child Left Behind Act, however, the school department might no longer be allowed to provide its own tutoring services under the program using public school teachers.

The No Child Left Behind Act forbids any school department where the students have failed to make “adequate yearly progress” in one or more categories two years in a row form offering its own tutoring services. Instead, the school department must continue paying for the tutoring but syphon students into courses offered by private companies.

Because Boston has failed to make “adequate yearly progress” two years in a row, thousands of students could be shifted from the department’s tutoring program into private programs.

The private companies usually charge much more to tutor a student than does the school department, according to a school department spokesman. That means fewer students will likely be served if all students are shifted into the private companies’ programs.

Shifting all students to outside providers could potentially cause a logistical nightmare. Last year, 2,668 students participated in the department’s tutoring program while just 1,447 participated in outside programs.

A school department spokesman indicated the department has not contacted the 10 eligible outside service providers to determine whether they can handle an influx of 1,000 or 2,000 students.

“The state’s the governing body when it comes to approving supplemental service providers, so I would assume in the approval process this is one of the things they went over,” said the spokesman, Jonathan Palumbo.

Palumbo, however, expressed confidence that the companies will be able to handle the influx.

“It’s a business, and so quite frankly I can’t see how those companies are going to turn down extra kids if they get the money,” he said.

Some outside service providers were itching for more business last year. They complained that the school department was unfairly promoting its own program over theirs.

Ayele Shakur, executive director of the Boston Learning Center, one of the 10 certified outside providers for Boston, argued that private companies, especially her own, would do a better job.

“The one significant flaw in their approach is asking the same teachers who in some way failed students during the school day to provide education after school,” she said.

While some education activists say the state fails to adequately monitor the effectiveness of private companies’ tutoring Shakur pointed out that this year the Boston Public Schools will monitor all providers, including itself, to see how effect they are at improving students’ skills.

“We are all now using the same measurement — the Stanford Diagnostic Test,” she said.

Whether or not the school department is allowed to continue its tutoring program, the department says it does not have enough money to provide tutoring for all eligible students.

“I’m concerned that No Child Left Behind is not fully funded,” said Kim Janey, Boston school reform project coordinator at Massachusetts Advocates for Children. “Now we have only about a third of students eligible actually receiving services.”

Tutoring alone will not bring schools to the point where they are making “adequate yearly progress” and providing a better education, said City Councilor Chuck Turner, formerly chairman of the Education Committee.

“Tutoring is useful,” he said. “However, we have to still understand there are many elements that play a role in terms of quality education: the extent to which teachers are receiving support and upgrading their teaching ability, the extent to which the school department is providing attractive, safe environments for students, the extent to which the department is supporting and developing parent site councils, in which parents are able to oversee the operation of schools.”

The school department recently created three new assistant superintendent positions focused solely on helping schools make adequate yearly progress.

The department has appealed to the state to petition the federal government to grant an exception to allow it to keep operating its program.

“The commissioner of education said last week he is willing to try to work with the federal government to allow us as a district to still provide services, because the number of kids we can service is [more than] other companies,” said Palumbo.

In the meantime, it remains unclear what will happen to children registered for the school department’s program this year if the school department is no longer allowed to run the program.

 

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