2nd February 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Many tutors in the US are frustrated at some districts’ new tougher rules to prevent the fraud which has tainted the ‘No Child Left Behind Scheme’ (NCLB). Reported in the Columbus Dispatch, tutors are claiming that the result of the new rules imposed by the district is that fewer students will receive tuition, and it is their grades which will suffer.
In Columbus more than 3,100 students signed up to receive the free lessons before October, but by early January only 630 students had been cleared to begin. This number should rise to more than 2,000 over the next few weeks, but that is still a long way shy of the number who want tuition. The district now requires every tuition agency to test their students to discover what kind of help is needed, and submit these tests to the district before any tuition can begin. The delay, the district says, is that hundreds of the tests either weren’t submitted, or weren’t correctly administered.
Ty Hairston, who owns Education Recruiting Services says that his agency tutored 170 students last year, but that number will be only 60 this year. He added that his company will not operate in Columbus next year, and that the scrutiny is “unfair”. The Apostolic Faith Temple has begun tutoring students in November for six years in a row, but was only cleared to begin this year on January 8th. Kathy Bealer, who oversees the programme says that many parents have sought help elsewhere, discouraged by the delay and uncertainty.
The past problems with NCLB have been well documented, and one of the main issues was that agencies were fraudulently signing documents intended for parents to state that lessons had been done when they had not. The new measures, employed in many districts in the US, are designed to combat this fraud and save taxpayer money. That it may do, but many honest tuition agencies claim that at the same time tutors are dropping out, and fewer students will receive the help they need.