Effectiveness of After-School Tutoring Studied

By Andrea Bennett on October 19, 2009 2:55 PM

Schools that fail to increase academic achievement three years in a row are required to offer their low-income students supplemental educational services, or extra tutoring outside of the school day, according to federal No Child Left Behind mandates.

Little is known, however, about how effective these programs are or what the outcome has been for children.

Patricia Burch, visiting assistant professor at USC Rossier School of Education and affiliated faculty for the Center on Educational Governance, along with two colleagues, aims to investigate the implementation and impact of supplemental educational services in a four-year study funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Educational Sciences.

The study has implications for students who are receiving free tutoring as a result of the mandate.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, 371,560 K-12 students were eligible for the services in September 2009, according to the district’s Beyond the Bell Branch. The amount of students eligible for supplemental services increases each year, along with public funds to accommodate them.

The $3 million competitive federal grant will allow Burch, Carolyn Heinrich and Robert Meyer to examine tutoring programs in five urban school districts in four states.

Heinrich is director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Meyer is director of the Value Added Research Center at the Wisconsin Center of Education Research.

TAGS: education, research

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