Federal

NCLB Choice Option Going Untapped, But Tutoring Picking Up

By Lynn Olson — March 15, 2005 5 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Districts are paying scant attention to the provision of federal education law that allows students in low-performing schools to transfer elsewhere, though more are providing children with the supplemental services to which they are entitled.

New data submitted to the federal government show that eligible students who transferred to a higher-performing public school under the No Child Left Behind Act averaged 1 percent nationwide last school year. On the tutoring front, 11 states reported that 20 percent or more of eligible children received supplemental educational services that school year.

States had to submit those and other performance data to the U.S. Department of Education by Dec. 31, as part of their applications for federal aid under the law. Education Week obtained the state-by-state data under a Freedom of Information Act request to the department.

The 3-year-old NCLB law contains two provisions designed to provide immediate help for children in Title I schools identified for improvement: Students in a school that fails to meet its performance targets for two years in a row can choose to attend another public school in the district. If their school fails to meet its targets for a third year, children from low-income families in such schools can receive free tutoring from a public or private provider selected from a state-approved list.

But critics have long complained that the school choice provision is not viable—a complaint that seems to be borne out by the data.

See Also

See the related table, “NCLB: State Report on Progress":

PDF version | Excel version.

Only a handful of states—Alabama, Kansas, New York, Oklahoma, and Oregon—reported that more than 10 percent of eligible students took advantage of the school choice option in 2003-04. In 21 states and the District of Columbia, that figure was 1 percent, the national average, or less.

In contrast, more than half the states that furnished comparable data over two years saw sizable jumps in the number of students who received tutoring in 2003-04 compared with the previous school year.

“Educators and folks in the state education systems are more comfortable with supplemental services than they are with the public school choice requirements,” said Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies for the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington. “The fact that folks in the districts and in the states see supplemental services as helpful and as consistent with seeking to make adequate yearly progress has made it an easier sell.”

On the other hand, he contended, “there’s very little incentive for principals or superintendents to pursue choice seriously. If you open your school, or you make real efforts to provide public school choice and accept these kids, there’s nothing in the way of reputational awards or motivational awards or resources, whereas dragging your feet is pretty much a no-cost option at this point.”

Even on the supplemental-services front, there is room for improvement.

Of those states that had students eligible for supplemental services and reported data, 18 had fewer than 10 percent of eligible students receive such services last school year. Only Utah came close to serving half of all eligible children.

Many groups have proposed reversing the order now specified in the law, so that districts would have to offer students tutoring the first year a school is identified for improvement and the transfer option if a school is identified for a second year.

“We do agree that there will be some tweaks when we get to the reauthorization process,” Melanie Looney, a majority staff member with the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said this month during a meeting in Washington sponsored by the Education Industry Association. She specifically mentioned reversing the order of choice and supplemental services as one option when the law comes up for renewal in 2007.

Is Picture Accurate?

As was true last year, states continued to report that the vast majority of their core academic classes are taught by teachers who meet the law’s definition of “highly qualified.”

Only a few states—California, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Utah—reported that more than 25 percent of their courses were taught by teachers not meeting the law’s definition.

To satisfy the standard, each teacher of a core subject must hold a bachelor’s degree and a standard teaching license from the state, as well as demonstrate knowledge of the subject taught. New teachers must do so by taking and passing tests in the subjects they teach or completing the equivalent of a college major. Veteran teachers may choose to meet the requirement under alternative standards devised by each state within broad federal guidelines.

Ross Wiener, the policy director for the Washington-based Education Trust, an advocacy group that works to improve achievement for poor and minority students, contends that the numbers “are not an accurate representation of shortages in qualified teachers.”

Most states, for example, reported few differences in the percent of classes taught by highly qualified teachers in high-poverty vs. low-poverty schools, despite research suggesting that students in high-poverty schools are more likely to have classes taught by teachers who are not licensed in their subjects or who lack even minors in those subjects.

“The U.S. Department of Education has sent clear signals that compliance with these provisions of the law is optional,” Mr. Wiener maintained, adding that most states “have taken up the feds on their offer to paper over this problem.”

“What’s so distressing,” he said, “is that it’s impossible to get people to focus on a problem if we continue to deny that a problem exists.”

Paraprofessionals

States are conceding more trouble meeting the law’s requirement that all paraprofessionals working in Title I schools be highly qualified by next January.

In 2003-04, the proportion of qualified aides ranged from a low of 27 percent in Massachusetts to a high of 99 percent in Iowa.

To be deemed qualified, aides must complete a minimum of two years’ worth of college courses or show through a formal state or local assessment that they have the skills to help with the teaching of reading, writing, and math.

Tish Olshefski, the director of the paraprofessional and school-related personnel department at the American Federation of Teachers, cited two reasons for the wide variation across states. Some 15 states already had some kind of certification standards in place for paraprofessionals before the law was enacted, she said, while others had done very little in that area. And second, “as far as implementation of NCLB,” she said, “it’s been all over the board, in terms of what states have been doing to help paraprofessionals, which is probably reflected in those numbers.”

A version of this article appeared in the March 16, 2005 edition of Education Week as NCLB Choice Option Going Untapped, But Tutoring Picking Up

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Federal Biden Calls for Teacher Pay Raises, Expanded Pre-K in State of the Union
President Joe Biden highlighted a number of his education priorities in a high-stakes speech as he seeks a second term.
5 min read
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 7, 2024, in Washington.
President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the Capitol on March 7, 2024, in Washington.
Shawn Thew/Pool via AP
Federal Low-Performing Schools Are Left to Languish by Districts and States, Watchdog Finds
Fewer than half of district plans for improving struggling schools meet bare minimum requirements.
11 min read
A group of silhouettes looks across a grid with a public school on the other side.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva
Federal Biden Admin. Says New K-12 Agenda Tackles Absenteeism, Tutoring, Extended Learning
The White House unveiled a set of K-12 priorities at the start of an election year.
4 min read
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona participates in a roundtable discussion with students from Dartmouth College on Jan. 10, 2024, on the school's campus, in Hanover, N.H.
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona participates in a roundtable discussion with students from Dartmouth College on Jan. 10, 2024, on the school's campus, in Hanover, N.H.
Steven Senne/AP
Federal Lawmakers Want to Reauthorize a Major Education Research Law. What Stands in the Way?
Lawmakers have tried and failed to reauthorize the Education Sciences Reform Act over the past nearly two decades.
7 min read
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., left, joins Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, as Starbucks founder Howard Schultz answers questions about the company's actions during an ongoing employee unionizing campaign, at the Capitol in Washington, on March 29, 2023.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., left, joins Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., left, at the Capitol in Washington, on March 29, 2023. The two lawmakers sponsored a bill to reauthorize the Education Sciences Reform Act.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP