Susan Saulny had a story in the New York Times last week about how few students who are eligible under No Child Left Behind for supplemental educational services (SES) like tutoring are taking advantage of the opportunity. Fewer of those who start actually finish the programs. And, as we’ve noted ourselves, there’s no “scientifically based research” of the programs’ effectiveness. NSBA’s Legal Clips has a summary of the Times piece, with links back to many past developments on the SES front, here.
The Times also ran an editorial deploring the situation, arguing that the feds and states need to stop the finger-pointing and, by the way, increase accountability of SES providers and provide the necessary funding. Speaking of finger-pointing, Checker Finn of the Fordham Foundation takes the Times to task here for missing what he claims is the real scandal: He calls for “outrage that some districts are doing all they can to keep parents in the dark” about SES opportunities.
Actually, what NSBA is hearing from school districts is a very different story. It goes like this. Some of the district’s schools aren’t making AYP, so of course they have every reason to want their students to get the extra help. But the schools or the district are barred from providing SES themselves. The private SES providers hire the district’s teachers to do the tutoring and pay them just what the district would have. But they charge the district several times what it would have cost the district to do the job. That means fewer kids can get help. HmmEven those innocents who have yet to figure out that the 65 Percent Solution is a cynical political ploy apparently are barking up the wrong tree altogether.
As BoardBuzz has been pointing out for some time, there’s no sinister conspiracy at work when those who actually have to balance school budgets while serving all children bump up against what doesn’t work in NCLB.
On this point we have our own quibble with the Times editorial. While it focuses on the feds and states, it includes this line: “Instead of providing tutoring from outside sources—as envisioned under the law—some failing schools have been allowed to do it themselves.” We have to call them on that one. Undoubtedly there are schools that are, by any measure, failing to meet the needs of their students. But these editorialists repeat the all-too-easy mistake of equating any school, or for that matter any district, that is ineligible under NCLB rules to provide SES with one that is “failing” and, presumably, incapable of tutoring.
This journalistic shorthand is one of the most predictable but most irresponsible NCLB phenomena—one that has done much to undermine the credibility of NCLB, and one that some NCLB supporters now and then have strenuously urged reporters to avoid. Thankfully, many news media have been more careful about always explaining the proper context and nuances, even if this takes a little more space or time.
In this case, a school or district that misses targets for even one of many student sub-groups finds itself moving toward ineligibility, even if it has fixed the problems for that sub-group in the first year but then has a challenge with an entirely different sub-group—or an entirely different set of pupils—in the next. And even if we’re talking about a very high quality school or district overall.
As the Times article notes and editorial seems to bewail, the feds have responded gingerly to the cost and ineligibility problems by granting a few waivers to allow technically ineligible districts to provide SES themselves. High profile examples of pushback like this one by some gutsy school districts helped prompt the concession.
But there’s another problem with the SES program and the news coverage. If a school is identified for improvement, every one of its low-income students is eligible for SES, not just those who are in the sub-group that is failing to make adequate yearly progress. Somehow that crucial point seems to get overlooked in many discussions of what percentage of the huge numbers of “eligible” students aren’t going in for the extra help.
Here’s a novel idea: Instead of providing a few waivers around these problems, how about just fixing them? Here’s how. Among other ideas, NSBA has proposed targeting NCLB interventions like SES on the students who actually need the help. What a concept.
