Do Supplemental Educational Services Increase Opportunities for Minority Students?

WHEN CONGRESS included a provision the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act that required to offer supplemental educational services as a remedy for poor performance, it was a political compromise between supporters and opponents of vouchers. There was no precedent federal law for this provision and no body of research that provided clear and consistent evidence that supplemental educational services improve learning outcomes for low-performing--particularly low-income or minority--students. Yet the supplemental educational services provision represents a major tenet of NCLB--that competition will produce better educational opportunities for disadvantaged students than the public provide. According to federal policy makers, ... supplemental educational services requirements of the law not only help to enhance student achievement but also provide an incentive for low-performing to improve. (1) Underlying supplemental services is the assumption that academic instruction provided outside the regular school day by public and private organizations will able to do what cannot--raise the achievement of students consistently poorly performing schools. NCLB included two required sanctions for identified as in need of improvement, that is, those that did not meet the state's adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals. The first was that offer their students the option to transfer out of low- performing schools. The second was that parents could purchase supplemental services with money set aside from the district's Title I budget for this purpose. NCLB defines supplemental educational services as academic instruction designed to increase the academic achievement of students low-performing schools and indicates that they must high quality, research-based, and specifically designed to increase student achievement. The federal legislation also requires that supplemental services be provided outside the regular school day, which may include after-school and weekend programs. (2) By specifying who could offer these services, the law created a market for public and private organizations to provide tutoring services to students enrolled public schools. These requirements reversed the direction of earlier Title I legislation that focused on establishing schoolwide programs coordinated with the regular curriculum. The original categorical Title I program had been criticized because of curricular and instructional fragmentation the delivery of instruction and a lack of coordination between the Title I program and the regular curriculum. (3) Recognizing the problem, federal officials began to soften requirements that program services distinct and easily identifiable. The 1988 Hawkins-Stafford Amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)--and later the 1994 Improving America's Schools Act--gave local school districts and greater flexibility deciding where and how to use Title I resources and encouraged the adoption of schoolwide programs. The federal law also lowered the poverty cutoff point required for to qualify for adopting a schoolwide program. While not a panacea, schoolwide programs eliminated some of the major obstacles to integrating Title I services with the school curriculum. The earlier Title I legislation also granted increased flexibility to school professionals to address the concentration of disadvantaged students poor neighborhoods. (4) It directed additional resources to serving disadvantaged students and promoted flexibility the use of those resources to encourage instructional innovation and coordination between the Title I program and the regular curricular program. Finally, prior ESEA legislation incorporated accountability by requiring that the same standards apply to all students, including those high-poverty Title I schools. Taken together, these approaches were intended to foster deep and comprehensive school reform that would demonstrate results. …