U.S. to Expand Pilots Offering Flexibility
On No Child Left Behind Tutoring

In a push to provide more children with free tutoring under the No Child Left Behind Act, U.S. Department of Education officials have announced the expansion of two pilot programs that allow school districts to offer the extra assistance a year earlier than usual, and to serve as tutoring providers even if they themselves have been deemed poor performers.

The July 26 announcement by Deputy Secretary Ray Simon means that for the 2006-07 school year, 23 school districts in five states will be allowed to offer free tutoring to students from schools that have failed to make “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind law for two consecutive years. Those students will be offered the choice of transferring to a better-performing school after their own schools have failed to meet targets for three years running.

The federal school improvement law requires underperforming schools to offer the transfer choice first—after a school has failed to meet academic targets for two years—and then tutoring, after three. But a pilot program in 2005-06 allowed four school districts in Virginia to reverse that order. The Virginia districts may now continue that practice, and 19 more districts in Alaska, Delaware, Indiana, and North Carolina will be allowed to...