Online Tutoring Targeted at Rural Areas

A national association is teaming up with three of its regional members and one of the country’s largest providers of supplemental instruction to use the Internet to help give rural students better access to academic tutoring that is required under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The partnership, armed with a $5 million, five-year federal grant, aims to overcome barriers that small and rural school districts face in obtaining such services from education companies, which mostly cater to large metropolitan areas.

“A lot of supplemental-service deliverers won’t go into rural areas,” said Brian L. Talbott, the executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based Association of Educational Service Agencies, a group formed to assist the more than 630 education service agencies that exist in 42 states. “Rural districts are telling us, through their educational service districts, that they need a way to be able to combine...