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June 1, 2004
Best practices in NCLB supplemental services
The U.S. Department of Education has issued a report profiling best practices by school districts implementing the supplemental services provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB requires school districts to provide extra academic assistance for low-income students who are attending Title I schools that have failed to make adequate yearly progress for three or more years. The department's press release says that at least 160,000 students took advantage of either supplemental services or school choice under NCLB in the 2002-03 school year.
The report profiles Toledo, Ohio; Forsyth County, Ga.; San Diego City Schools; Rochester City School District, N.Y.; and Los Angeles Unified School District. The four keys to successful outcomes, according to the feds, are: (1) embracing supplemental services, instead of viewing them as another compliance burden; (2) building relationships with service providers; (3) reaching out to inform parents; and (4) setting clear goals and tracking progress.
Providing extra help to needy students offers great promise for closing the achievement gap, and some of the success stories highlighted in the report are of school districts that initially were very skeptical of the supplemental services mandates. On the other hand, as this article from School Board News details, NCLB's rules sometimes really can cause problems for school districts. The costs of supplemental services can drain money away from school programs, especially when the private services are much more expensive per pupil than school programs. In some districts, schools report serving fewer students, with fewer hours of help, since NCLB required them to spend limited funds on private services. In some communities, qualified providers are scarce.
Other troubling issues over supplemental services are raised by proposed federal rules on faith-based providers. Faith-based organizations can be very effective providers of academic tutoring. But the proposed rules have some weaknesses in making sure that all students and their parents can be confident that, for example, a reading program is about reading and that it will treat students of all religious persuasions fairly.
NSBA has submitted comments on the proposed faith-based rules and also has recommended revising NCLB's supplemental services rules generally to make them more affordable, including by limiting mandatory provision of supplemental services only to students who belong to the sub-group(s) that failed to make adequate yearly progress at the school. One of this year's audio conferences by the Council of School Attorneys will focus on issues around providing supplemental services.
Stay tuned for more from BoardBuzz on making supplemental services work for your district.
Posted June 1, 2004 12:00 AM
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