A higher percentage of students participate in supplemental educational services than in school choice programs available under the No Child Left Behind Act, but very few parents are actually aware of the existence of either of these federal programs, says a policy brief.
The brief—by Justin Bathon, an associate instructor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Terry Spradlin, the associate director for education policy at the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana—based its conclusions on a nationwide series of educational research institutes that had gathered data on the rates of student participation in the NCLB school choice program from 2002 to 2006. It found that these programs were filled at less than 5 percent of capacity in all cases.
The authors also cite evidence from a 2006 U.S. Government Accountability Office report that found student participation in supplemental educational services, such as after-school tutoring for low-income students, to have increased nationally from roughly 100,000 to more than 400,000 students since 2002, particularly in urban areas.
“Outcomes of the School Choice and Supplemental Educational Services Provisions of NCLB” is available from the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University.
