The number of students taking advantage of free tutoring and school choice under federal law increased dramatically in a school year that has been newly analyzed by the U.S. Department of Education. In the 2003-04 school year, 233,000 students signed up for federally financed tutoring. The students were eligible for the extra help because they attended a school that failed to meet its achievement goals for three consecutive years under the No Child Left Behind Act.
The number of students in tutoring was five times higher than the previous school year.
In the 2004-05 school year, 45,000 students transferred out of a school that didn’t make achievement targets for the previous two years. In the 2003-04 school year, 18,000 had transferred.
Despite the large increase in the numbers of students choosing those options, overall participation rates remain low because large numbers of students became eligible for the first time in the 2003-04 school year.
In that year, 17 percent of eligible students enrolled in a tutoring program, while 1 percent of students eligible to transfer did so, the Education Department reported.
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