Public Schools Deny Low-Income Children Tutoring
By Dan Lips
The Heritage Foundation
February 24, 2006
For years, America’s public schools have resisted education reforms that give parents the ability to choose an alternative school for their child. Now, some public schools have gone even further, denying low-income children the free tutoring they are entitled to under federal law.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB) provided parents of low-income students in low-performing schools with an avenue to boost their children’s education. Children attending Title I eligible schools that have not met state performance standards for three consecutive years are entitled to “supplemental educational services” (i.e. after-school tutoring). School districts must reserve a portion of their share of federal Title I funding to pay for such tutoring, as well as public school choice.
This month, the Education Industry Association (EIA) hosted a forum to bring together state legislators, heads of tutoring companies, and civil rights organizations to discuss how No Child Left Behind’s tutoring provisions have been implemented. The news was not encouraging. The Department of Education reported that just 11 percent of eligible children received after-school tutoring services in 2004. The roots of that participation failure may lie with foot-dragging by educational bureaucracies that were less than excited by the tutoring initiative.
According to an EIA survey of tutoring providers, many school districts weren’t helpful in ensuring that tutoring programs were well implemented. The survey, which included responses from 216 providers nationwide, found that 60 percent of providers said that they did not think that school districts gave parents sufficient notice to enroll their children in tutoring. One tutoring provider reported that schools’ reluctance to promote the program “made us feel we were encountering passive resistance at all levels in the school system.” Tutoring providers pointed to a number of administrative problems encountered in efforts to implement the program.
Throughout the nation, the success of the implementation of after-school tutoring program has varied by school district. Tutoring providers point to the Baltimore city school district as a model of cooperation. There, 4,000 children received tutoring last year—80 percent of the students for whom District funding was available. In contrast, Pittsburgh provided tutoring for only 100 of the 3,000 children who were eligible.
As Congress considers reforms to the No Child Left Behind law, a number of policy changes can be made to ensure that more parents have access to free tutoring for their children. One helpful reform would be to allow children to be eligible for tutoring the first year that their school fails to meet state performance benchmarks, rather than enduring three consecutive years of low performance. Another constructive reform would be to remove incentives for school districts to avoid spending the 20 percent of Title I that was intended to be allocated for tutoring. At present, school districts are allowed to use unspent Title I funds allocated for tutoring if the funding goes unused.
Such improvements in the after-school tutoring provisions of the current No Child Left Behind law would be a step in the right direction. But Congress shouldn’t stop there. Bolder reforms are needed to ensure that America’s at-risk children have access to the quality instruction they deserve.
President Bush recently proposed a $100 million Opportunity Scholarships for Kids initiative that would allow six to 10 cities to offer private-school scholarships to low-income children trapped in persistently failing schools (i.e. schools that failed to meet performance targets for six years). Offering private-school scholarships to these children would demonstrate the demand for additional forms of school choice in school systems throughout the nation.
The federal government annually spends more than $66 billion on K-12 education programs—more than $1,400 a year for every public-school student in America. The best way to ensure that every child has access to a quality education is to give parents greater control of how their children’s share of that funding is spent. Options such as making funding portable through opportunity scholarships and improving access to tutoring are important steps toward this goal.
Dan Lips is policy analyst for education at the Heritage Foundation, www.Heritage.org .
School segregation growing in California, study finds
ECONOMY, POLICY HELP SHAPE TREND SINCE '68
By Lisa M. Krieger
Mercury News
California's schools are among the most segregated in the nation -- and they are becoming even more divided, with Latino and African-American students clustered together and isolated from whites, according to a study released this week by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.
This trend -- driven by economic, policy and demographic changes within the state -- compounds the disadvantages of Latino and black students. And white students miss an important lesson about life in a diverse society, the researchers conclude.
``Segregation is growing in degree and complexity as the nation becomes increasingly multiracial,'' said Gary Orfield, lead author of the report and director of the project. ``We have to get away from thinking of segregation as something that came out of the Old South -- and think about how it's happening in the new California.''
The findings hold true even in diverse Silicon Valley. In the San Jose Unified School District, the average black student in 1991 went to a school with 40 percent white students and 40 percent Latino students. By 2003, that changed to 28 percent white students and 50 percent Latinos.
In general, the study said, schools with high concentrations of blacks and Latinos have less-qualified teachers, lower levels of student competition, more limited curriculum, more serious health problems and a higher dropout rate. There are fewer fluent native speakers of standard English, a skill that's essential in college.
The Harvard researchers studied the changing patterns of racial composition in the nation's schools in regions, states and districts by using data from 1968 until 2003-04 from the U.S. Department of Education.
They found that in 2003, the average Latino student in the state attended a school with 19 percent white students, down from about 50 percent in 1970. The average black student in California attended a school with 22 percent white students in 2003, down from 26 percent in 1970.
Asian-Americans are the most integrated racial group. Even when they are in predominantly minority schools, they are seldom in schools overwhelmingly Asian, and are unlikely to have the kind of ``linguistic segregation'' that affects Latino students, the study found.
P.A.T.H.S. believes the only true way to bring about equality within our public school system is to expand school choice measures. School choice will allow students from lower-income neighborhoods who are currently attending failing public schools to instead go to a school of their choosing, whether it be public, private, or charter. School choice will bring about greater diversity in our public schools, while also affording students from the worst of our schools an opportunity for greater success.
There is nothing 'special' about Special Education
Debbie Smith, Executive Director
P.A.T.H.S. Through School Choice
An article posted in the Arizona Republic on February 21, 2006, entitled, "Bill Addresses Special Ed's Money Needs," deserves everyone's attention and further analysis. The article cites that recently the Scottsdale School Board reviewed the money spent on special education students versus the money received from state and federal agencies to educate those students. The article details the amount incurred by the school district, illustrating a deficit when it comes to the delivery of services to special education students.
Again, we get more rhetoric about how the public schools are under-funded because "special education is a mandated program...but these mandates don't come fully funded." It is because of this alleged under-funding, their argument goes, that a bill is being proposed (SB 1078) that would close this funding "gap."
The truth about the state of special education is disgraceful because many students are mis-labeled (usually boys with behavioral issues) as needing special education services. No matter, the public schools can get more money for these mis-labeled students while quite often not providing the proper services to them. Essentially, these students are simply put in a special education classroom, where they disrupt the class, preventing the students who truly need to be there from being able to learn in an environment free from chaos.
P.A.T.H.S. believes that instead of condemning more and more children to the inefficiencies of special education in the public school system, the state and federal funds attached to each child be applied to a school of the parents choosing. This would not only allow for the children who truly need to be classified in special education to obtain an appropriate education, but would also discourage school districts from labeling students inappropriately.
Center for Education Reform Newswire
Vol. 8, No. 8
February 22, 2006
CHOICE
MILWAUKEE DEAL STRUCK! Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, a Democrat, has never been a proponent of school choice. In 2003 and again in 2005, he vetoed legislation to increase the cap on voucher slots in the state. Last week, however, after hearing the angry cries of his African-American constituents, he reached a compromise with Assembly speaker John Gard to add 7,500 voucher slots in The Badger State. The power of the voters is a beautiful thing. In the last two weeks, Milwaukee-area African-American leaders, students and parents have been taking to the airwaves and streets to protest Doyle's original plan that would deny vouchers to thousands of students. Even the head of the Milwaukee school board spoke on the radio proclaiming vouchers, "one of the greatest social justice issues we have in the country." With vouchers' popularity on the rise in Wisconsin - Milwaukee's program has been highly successful for 15 years - Democrats are starting to feel pressure to stray from the grips of the teacher unions to keep minority voters. In a New York Times editorial, John Tierney asks, "how can Democratic leaders keep preaching their devotion to public schools while sending their own children to private schools, as Governor Doyle does? He's what I call a Lypsy, an acronym for Let Your People Stay." It appears that Milwaukee's African-American community doesn't want to stay and they have taken a stand that even the Lypsy had to respond to.
SUNSHINEY DAY. It was a bright day in Florida last Wednesday as 4,000 students and parents gathered at the Capitol courtyard in Tallahassee to open the eyes of the Legislature and demand school choice. The gathering was hailed as the largest school choice rally in U.S. history. Since the Florida Supreme Court decision in January, which ruled the Opportunity Scholarships program unconstitutional, poor and minority families have been pushing to keep school choice alive. Governor Jeb Bush is listening. One day before the rally, the Governor announced his A++ Plan for Education. The plan promises to provide reforms that will "offer Florida students more choices, more opportunities and a more rigorous education." The governor drew the greatest applause from the crowd when he announced his effort to put a proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would revive the Opportunity Scholarships program and protect the state's two other choice programs. "Florida's school choice programs give every student a chance to succeed, providing real choice to families while driving greater student achievement in low-performing public schools," said Governor Bush. "All parents should have the opportunity to send their child to the school they believe holds the best chance for future success."
You Can’t Handle the Truth
Morty Rosenfeld gives teacher unions straight talk on school choice
February 22, 2006
The Goldwater Institute
Morty Rosenfeld, President of the Plainview-Old Bethpage (New York) Congress of Teachers, strikes again, this time on the subject of charter schools. I am struck by the straight talk offered by this teacher union president:
During two recent union leadership meetings I attended, the subject of charter schools was on the agenda. More specifically, both bodies were discussing legislative proposals to curb the growth of charter schools in New York State…But absent from any of the union discussion of charter schools that I am aware of is a clearly mapped out agenda for the improvement of the public schools…when I suggested that a more potent defense against the growth of charter schools was a union agenda to fix the public schools that went beyond the need for more money, a falling pin would have broken the tensely rapt silence...Unless and until education unions militantly organize around an agenda for improving the public schools…an agenda that offers hope to students imprisoned in objectively failing schools and their parents, the peddlers of alternatives to public schools will appeal to segments of the public who desperately yearn for schools that will equip their children with the skills to obtain a better life.
Would that more leaders within the unions had the integrity of Mr. Rosenfeld. Teacher unions are in a unique position to put innovative ideas on the table to reform public schools. School choice could be one of them.
Matthew Ladner is Director of State Projects at the Alliance for School Choice and a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute.