California parents don't know about free NCLB tutoring?!
Thousands of students in Inland schools are not taking advantage of the free tutoring available to them under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Minimal efforts to notify parents, lack of transportation for students and low parent interest are reasons cited by many school-district officials, tutoring providers and parents.
In 2004-05, about 800,000 students across the state were eligible to receive the free tutoring that certain schools are required to offer when they fail to meet academic-performance targets for three years in a row. However, only 12 percent received the services, according to a report by the state Department of Education.
Nationwide, only 16.6 percent of the 1.4 million students eligible in 2003-04, the latest year with numbers available, received tutoring.
In Riverside and San Bernardino county school districts, the percentage of students participating in free tutoring programs range from zero to about 34 percent.
In a speech last month, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said districts must do a better job of reaching out to parents and telling them their options.
"More than half of school districts didn’t even tell parents that their children were eligible for these options until after the school year had already begun," Spellings said.
Why, you would think there was some kind of pattern here!
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