According to a 4/5/06 report from the federal dept. of ed, states are trying to fill in the gap in the federal law. However, according to the report:
- 15 states had not established any monitoring process of SES providers at all
- 25 states had not yet established any standards for evaluating provider effectiveness
- none had finalized their evaluation standards
17 states said they will evaluate student achievement on state assessments, although only one of these plans to use a matched control group. The most common approaches that states have implemented to monitor providers, according to the federal report, are surveying the districts about provider effectiveness (25 states) and using providers’ reports on student-level progress (18 states).
Other relevant facts:
- The number of state-approved supplemental service providers has tripled over the past two years, rising from 997 in May 2003 to 2,734 in May 2005.
- Private firms accounted for 76 percent of approved providers in May 2005.
- A growing number and percentage of faith-based organizations have obtained state approval, rising from 18 providers (2 percent of providers) in May 2003 to 249 (9 percent) in May 2005.
FYI - SES tutoring providers in Missouri are approved by the state dept. of education. Missouri has criteria for approval listed on the DESE web site. It also lists the approved providers. Of the 68 SES providers approved by the state of Missouri, nearly 60% are private companies.
6 comments:
The marketplace and freedom of choice will automatically hold them accountable. Businesses like this depend on word-of-mouth to grow and survive. If they don't perform, they're gone.
Reed
Reed - this assumes that the marketplace is actually free, is devoid of influence peddling, abstains from breaking the law, and holds high standards of ethical practice. Certainly many, many businesses adhere to such standards. But many don't. Moreover, a business is in business to do one thing: make money. Businesses can certainly try to do well by being good. Some succeed. But many don't. This is not because these businesses have corrupt practices (although we can never really know for sure how many Enrons are out there). The reason why it's hard for companies to do well by being good is because being good doesn't pay the bills. Generating revenue is what pays the bills. And generating profit is what makes investors happy.
If you fail to generate revenue, you go out of business. It's really that simple.
So with this constantly in mind, businesses have to find ways to stay in business. Often this means making decisions that benefit the business, not its customers.
For example, I spoke to a special ed teacher who used to teach in St. Louis. Her school was undergoing Year 3 AYP sanctions under NCLB. Sylvan Learning -- a for-profit educational tutoring company -- had been selected to serve her school. Having seen the flashy, well-produced commercials on TV, this teacher believed that Sylvan was a great company. So she strongly urged the parents of the children she taught to sign up for this "free" tutoring service. However, upon actually watching the Sylvan teachers in action, she realized she was wrong. She was appalled by their lack of knowledge, their lack of skill, and their lack of professionalism.
She told me, "I told those parents to take my babies to this tutoring service. I told them how great it was going to be and how much it would help. But as it turned out, I looked like a fool. All these people are looking to do is make a buck off poor kids."
At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves: why would we want to risk our children's future in this way? Why would we want to allow an educational company to hire untrained, unqualified teachers? And why would we not demand that the same kind of oversight and accountability that applies to public school teachers be applied to private tutors?
I simply don't agree with you that "if they don't peform, they're gone." The state of Missouri has appproved not one but three divisions of Sylvan. Check out this web site if you don't believe me. In other words, they're still here. They're still in business. And they're still serving children in Missouri.
Couple final points:
It takes some knowledge of what a good teacher is to be able to say, "Hey, this person is a bad teacher." Sadly, so many of us were taught by really bad teachers. So if a parent sees a teacher standing in front of a class, holding a piece of chalk, and droning on about dependent clauses, it may occur to that parent that this is what a teacher does. After all, it may look mighty familiar. But if NCLB is about leaving no child behind, then we need more than this. Indeed, we should demand more than this. We are the ones who are paying for this "free" service.
Why would Sylvan hire such bad teachers? Is it because they are evil? No, not at all. They're doing what they can under what they are allowed to do. So they could recruit and hire highly-qualified teachers, or they could put an ad in the paper and hire anyone with a high school diploma. Which choice makes the company more money? Obviously hiring the person with the high school diploma makes them more money because they only have to pay this person a fraction of what a highly-qualified teacher would expect to be paid. Which choice is better for the customers, in this case the students? Obviously it's better for the students to have highly-qualifed teachers teaching them. But which did the students end up getting? They got the cheaper teacher. Of course, Sylvan would reason that this person was probably put through some training and was qualified to teach.
But the proof is in the pudding or, in this case, standing in front of the classroom.
For Sylvan to offer its services, ostensibly to help kids learn, it has to be able to run a business and stay in business. To run a business and stay in business, Sylvan has to afford to stay in business. And, to stay in business, Sylvan -- to use some corporate jargon -- "realizes efficiencies in its operations." Ironically, and perhaps inevitably, to realize efficiencies, it ends up offering an inferior product.
It doesn't have to be this way. We can demand that private companies hire highly qualified teachers in the same way the federal government demands that public schools hire highly qualified teachers.
The fatal flaw in your argument is that people have a choice to go to Sylvan or not. They have no freedom to pay or not pay their taxes.
If the "choice" for parents is Sylvan or some other unregulated business that offers inferior services, then this is no choice at all.
Paying taxes is what citizens of this country do to be members of this society. If your house is ever on fire, please tell me how much you resent paying taxes while you put it out yourself.
By the way - the federal government only contributes 10% of the total amount spent on public education. Most is collected by the state and local governments. So please don't think that your federal tax dollars are being used for education. They could be, but they are not.
It could be argued that the number one national security issue for our country is making sure our country has a future. One day not too far away, all the grown-ups will be gone. All that will be left is the current generation of children. If we don't do what it takes to prepare them, then we won't have a country any more. We currently spend app. $2 billlion per week in Iraq because we say it's vital to our national security to do so. But nothing could be more vital to our national security than giving our children the kind of education they need.
What makes a qualified teacher? For that matter, what makes a teacher a good one? Is it passing tests and getting certifying pieces of paper? Many of our children are subjected to 'teachers' that are qualified by jumping through testing hoops, but they can't handle the active little boys and girls without medicating them. They aren't really teachers, they are technicians.
In the book, "A New Kind of Teacher", John Taylor Gatto presents an interesting perspective on what it means to be a teacher. It doesn't include rookies straight out of college with diplomas that qualify them to teach, but no experience in the world.
Teaching is a bit like vaudeville, whether you're working with a class or with one or two students in a tutoring setting. You have to 'work' the audience and experience with people is needed to do that. It's necessary to adapt your routine to what the students (in this metaphor - the audience) brings to it in life experiences and knowledge. The stakes are higher though, with students, you're not playing for laughs, but for life.
In an interview that I recently gave on the subject of tutoring, I made a distinction between what I called industrial strength programs and personal services. Anonymous must have been talking about the personal services. They will go under if they don't do their job, because they have no great profit margin. They are privately contracted and directly overseen by parents who sought them out. Those parents tend to have discretionary funds and a better education. They are fairly capable of determining effectiveness.
The industrial strength companies are businesses with less adaptable curriculums. They are often franchised and know how to get at federal and state monies. They have the ability and connections to get promoted to school districts by their marketing departments. This produces the situation that you described the special ed teacher found herself in. They won't go under if they fail a student. They'll just go on to the next.
The real point of all of this should be the children. What provides them with what they need? The schools should be doing it without needing the support of tutoring services. It is a business scam for the most part, but then again, that's been the way that our public programs have been drifting.
I would work for our public schools in a heartbeat (and I've tried to several times) but they won't pay me a living wage, count my decades of experience in private schools, or let me teach.
The last time that I worked in a public program I averaged giving about ten lessons a week. In private programs where I don't have to 'be accountable' I average 8 lessons a day. The children learn and are happy.
I don;t believe that our schools want good teachers, they want cheap ones. Now they want cheap tutors to supplement the inexperience.
The solution is to fix the schools, not create new markets. Gatto's book has a lot of good suggestions-but the moneymongers in charge won't like them. In the meantime what's happening to our children?
More evidence that the marketplace and freedom of choice will not automatically hold private tutoring companies accountable.
In a report in the Fresno Bee from 5/28/06, reporter Christina Vance writes that the tutoring service provided for under NCLB "has become a monitoring nightmare for school districts trying to weed out tutoring companies with questionable business and academic standards."
For example, Vance writes, "Fresno Unified caught a company last year that submitted more than $200,000 in invalid fees to the district hidden among boxes and boxes of invoices, said Barbara Bengel, the district's director of state and federal programs. She hired extra clerical staff to scrutinize the bills.
"We had quite a few instances of overbilling or double-billing," Bengel said.
Here's the key: the company didn't suffer any consequences for the billing issues. It remains on a state-approved list of tutors, meaning any eligible family can request its services.
"It's technically the duty of state officials to monitor the quality of tutoring companies, but that's not happening," said Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C.
"This has been a source of frustration to local school districts," he said.
"The states are just evolving their roles in this area. They don't have the staff to oversee these providers."
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