Tutor Program Offered by Law Is Going Unused

This is too bad...

Four years after President Bush signed the landmark No Child Left Behind education law, vast numbers of students are not getting the tutoring that the law offers as one of its hallmarks.

I wonder what would happen if parents were given tutoring vouchers and allowed to arrange for tutoring themselves?

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Tutor Program Offered by Law Is Going Unused

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Lauren Caramanica tutored second graders at P.S. 152 in the Bronx in a program that's part of the No Child Left Behind law.

By SUSAN SAULNY

Published: February 12, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/education/12tutor.html?incamp=article_popular&pagewanted=all

Four years after President Bush signed the landmark No Child Left Behind education law, vast numbers of students are not getting the tutoring that the law offers as one of its hallmarks.

Ninoska Valverde, 13, who goes to a junior high school in Brooklyn that is classified as failing, said she did not know about the free tutoring program. "I'm interested in anything that would help me," she said.

In the nation's largest school district, New York City, fewer than half of the 215,000 eligible students sought the free tutoring, according to figures from the city's Department of Education for the school year that ended in June 2005.

In one area of the city, District 19 in eastern Brooklyn, about 3,700 students completed a tutoring program last year, even though more than 13,000 students qualified.

Yet New York's participation rate is better than the national average: across the country, roughly two million public school students were eligible for free tutoring in the school year that ended in 2004, according to the most recent data from the Department of Education, yet only 226,000 — or nearly 12 percent — received help...