2nd April 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
An organisation in Milwaukee, Common Ground, has released a report claiming that there is too little regulation for providers of private tuition operating under the ‘No Child Left Behind’ programme. Common Ground is a nonpartisan group which has previously been concerned with foreclosure and healthcare issues in the city, but it has now turned its attention to education, and has expressed concerns that millions of taxpayers money is being wasted.
Each student qualifying for the programme in Milwaukee is allocated $1,927 a year for private tuition, with the fees ranging from $60 to $100 an hour. There were 15,034 students eligible to receive the service last year, but only 2,370 were actually tutored. Even so, this amounted to more than $5.3million spent on tuition, and $7.5million has been earmarked for the programme this year.
Common Ground have so far not collected as much data as they would like, and their findings come from speaking with the tuition providers, schools and parents. Common Ground say that there are agencies who are adept at finding good quality tutors and monitoring student progress, but there is also evidence to suggest that this isn’t always the case.
One requirement is for the agencies to conduct an initial assessment of each student, and create an action plan for the student’s lessons, which has to be signed off by a parent before the agency receives any funding. However, there is dispensation if an agency claims not to have received a response from the parent, and can still collect the tuition costs. Common Ground claim that there is evidence that many parents have not received an action plan, and yet their child has still received the tuition, suggesting that agencies are abusing the dispensation system. Common Ground want to stop this abuse, and enforce the requirement for tuition providers to show that students have benefitted from the extra lessons.