24th October 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A recent report in the Columbus Dispatch stated that more than half of the private tutors contracted by the government are performing below the level expected. The ‘no child left behind’ scheme is a pledge by the government to provide free extra tuition to any student deemed to need it, and whose family could not afford to source a tutor themselves. However, an alarming number of the government employed tutors in Ohio have been found to be performing poorly.
The tuition evaluation reports have been used for a number of years, but this is first time that the results have been so accessible to parents. The report in Ohio showed that, from just over 200 tutors, 20 were assessed to be ‘not effective’ and 89 were said to ‘need improvement’. 6 of the ineffective tutors are no longer allowed to work in Ohio. It wasn’t clear how the effectiveness of tuition was measured.
The state superintendent conceded that the results show that the tutoring programme needs a ‘dramatic change’, and that they are committed to the improvement. However, the results were released only 3 days before parents were required to choose a tutor for the upcoming year, and many of the families involved don’t have internet access, so it’s unlikely that many people will be able to act upon the recent report. The result is that these recent disappointing findings won’t actually be beneficial to students until the start of the 2012-13 academic year.