According to Sunday's front page Morning Call story "Left Behind":"Under No Child Left Behind, school districts have to set aside 10 percent of their federal money to pay for private tutoring firms if a school with a high percentage of poor students receives three consecutive years of failing standardized test scores on the Annual Yearly Progress reports."
The intention of this federal program under NCLB is to help poor students. The ASD gets $470,000 from the fed. govt. Right now they are only using 3.5 percent of this money, and the rest is wasted.
Here's why, according to the article: There is too much bureaucratic red tape involved with this plan, few low income parents sign students up for private tutors, public schools don't work hard enough to promote the program, Allentown already uses state money (5.4 million) for public school teachers to tutor 3,000 students. So are that many students really being left behind?
This federal plan just seems like a waste. How could Congress approve this? Plus, private tutors are not as familiar with the local standards as the teachers. How about peer tutoring? That would not cost any money. I guess the ASD could be reaching even more students if they were allowed to use the federal money to pay their teachers to tutor students, but this is not allowed under NCLB.
What I think the real issue here is why are there so many poor students who need tutoring to begin with? Where is parental responsibility? Maybe the federal govt. should look into a tutoring program for parents. And it appears like the NCLB plan is more concerned with promoting private companies at the expense of poor students than actually helping poor students. The Dept. of Education is out of touch with reality. Incompetent leadership at the top, and everywhere else. I say, keep more control at state and local levels; it may still be lousy, but maybe not as lousy as the fed. govt.
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2 comments:
Is it logical to assume that students aren't taking advantage of the tutoring because they have other responsibilities at home? I've noticed that often in poverty-stricken areas that students simply aren't able to take advantage of after-school activities. Some kids have to go straight to work immediately after the bell rings.
On another note, I've noticed that some or the poor students simply rely on sports to get by and sometimes it's those that end up having the hardest struggle, especially if they get hurt.
As far as NCLB goes, there is no leadership at this point. NCLB isn't going forward or backward; it's stuck on horrible, and that needs to change.
You're right to say that The Dept. of Educ. is out of touch with reality. It seems as though they only want believe what is said on paper instead of how things actually are. Tests don't reveal everything. We need to be researching how we can improve our educational programs instead of our testing standards. With the amount of resources we have in the USA, we shouldn't be an educational embarrassment.
AJ,
I think you are right, often kids from poor families have to take care of younger siblings. I can remember middle school girls missing school for this reason. If mom gets sick, the teenager must help. And kids do have to work after school. There are so many factors, all related to poverty. But I think parents need to do more too.
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