Schools foiling free-tutor program

Imagine being the parent of a child enrolled in a school that isn't working. You can't send him to a private school because you can't afford it, nor to another public school because there's no room. Every day he comes home from school depressed and disengaged. You do what you can. You visit with his teachers. You help with his homework. But you aren't a teacher. And his teachers, good people, are too busy to focus on your child. Slowly, he is drifting away.

Now imagine being told that your child is eligible for free tutoring after school, on weekends, whenever and wherever it is most convenient. You are told that the tutoring will focus on reading and math, that it will be based on the needs of the child, and that those providing the service have been certified by the state as qualified to tutor. You learn that the services will be aimed at making sure your child can read and calculate at his grade level and ensuring that he is prepared to do well on the state's school assessment. Most important, the tutoring will help him be promoted to the next grade ready for success.

What would be your response? Could you possibly say "no, thank you" to such an offer? And yet that is what the people in charge of a huge number of America's public schools would have us believe has been the response of parents around the country to this guarantee of supplemental educational services, which is contained in the landmark No Child Left Behind Act. These school administrators claim that of the 1.4 million children eligible for such tutoring during the past school year, only 233,000 (17 percent) had parents and guardians who found this offer worthy of acceptance. All the rest apparently declined free tutoring for their children.

That is simply preposterous.

The No Child Left Behind Act holds out the promise that children attending schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress toward academic proficiency for all students in reading and math will have access to tutoring services paid for with federal dollars. For the first time in more than 40 years of federal education policy, dollars are going directly to serve the academic needs of students rather than the schools the students attend.

The law says schools and school districts are to set aside money equal to 20 percent of their federal Title I funds for these tutoring services. It says the schools are to notify parents of their children's eligibility for the services, inform them of the names and varieties of tutoring services available, and make it easy for parents to enroll their children for the services.