Even though a lot of states are finding that No Child Left Behind’s tutoring initiative has no discernable effect on student achievement and the national results are underwhelming, the Department of Education has given the go-ahead (pdf) for states to offer the tutoring rather than public school choice when schools first fail to make “adequate yearly progress” under the law.
So, essentially, the school districts and states are saying that this mixed bag of often private tutoring programs is preferable to actual public schools in terms of serving students. It’s illustrative of how much the schools dislike the idea of empowering parents through public school choice ideas.
Though it’s too late for this administration, wouldn’t a strategy of actually enforcing No Child’s public school choice provisions and opening new public schools in underserved communities have made a lot more of a dent in the problem?