States Wrestle With How to Evaluate Tutoring

Policy Brief Offers States Guidance on Ways to Design Fair, Accurate Measures.

States must evaluate the effectiveness of the free tutoring being provided to children under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. But a lack of resources might force them to compromise on the rigor of those evaluations, a new report says.

The policy brief outlines factors that states might want to consider in deciding whether providers of “supplemental educational services” are fulfilling their promises to raise student achievement. It acknowledges that states “may face a trade-off” between wanting rigorous evaluations and having the time, money, and staff to conduct them.

Released last week by the Supplemental Educational Services Quality Center, a federally funded project of the American Institutes for Research, based in Washington, the paper aims to guide states through the thorny process...