Tutoring Firms, N.Y.C. School Employees Faulted in Probe

Two private tutoring companies offered cash to principals and gifts to students in New York City to boost attendance in their programs and maximize the share of federal money they got for serving low-income families under the No Child Left Behind Act, an investigation has found.

In a report issued last week, Richard J. Condon, the special commissioner of investigation for the 1.1-million student district, says that providers of supplemental educational services also improperly obtained private student information and used it to try to sign them up. In addition, they allowed into classrooms instructors who hadn’t cleared security checks, and were later found to have criminal records.

The 18-month probe focused on two of New York’s biggest players in the business, Platform Learning and Newton Learning, which together serve 18,000 of the 75,000 city students using such services. But it found that other unnamed providers, as well as district employees,...