As 'No Child' Answer, Tutoring Generates Complex Questions

Supplemental Education Services supporters, including Bush administration officials and the private companies that compete to offer tutoring services, said they are confident that the issues can be worked out and that children will benefit.

"It's an innovation, and with most innovations, it takes awhile for state and local officials to understand how to best put in place parameters that encourage innovative practices while at the same time holding providers accountable for results," said Nina S. Rees, assistant deputy secretary for the U.S. Education Department's office of innovation and improvement.

(Kaplan Inc., a subsidiary of The Washington Post Co., provides tutoring under SES.)

Critics have said that although the idea behind Supplemental Education Services is laudable, the Bush administration's rules are tilted in favor of the private sector.

"The Bush administration very much wants to encourage private [companies] to get involved in elementary and secondary public education," said Jack Jenning, director of the nonprofit Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based advocacy and research group. "They are finding any way they can to encourage federal money to be shifted to private companies . . . . Their whole bias is in favor of private companies and against school districts."

The Department of Education issued regulations, as well as non-regulatory guidance, in June to help states and school systems smooth over the difficulties as they implement the program. Contentiousness remains, however.

Supplemental Education Services administrators said that some of the private and nonprofit companies approved by the states are doing a great job of complying with the rules and helping students improve in reading and math.

They complain, though, about some for-profit companies, including those that agreed to work in a school and canceled when too few students signed up, leaving parents in the lurch. Maultsby said that in some instances, D.C. parents -- asked to make three choices on their application -- had all three providers opt out. Some school systems are changing rules to prevent that.

Another issue, providers said, is some companies expect schools to provide books for tutoring, although the law says the companies should have their own programs. And competition among providers has become so intense that providers were found wandering school grounds to recruit students.

Private providers and Education Department officials, however, said that many school systems simply do not like the program and throw up roadblocks to implementation.