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An examination of supplemental educational services expectations and realities in a large public school district

On January 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. This sweeping legislation brought reform to every area of public education by establishing seven performance-based provisions. Supplemental Educational Services is a core aspect of NCLB, designed to meet two of the seven goals: improving academic performance of disadvantaged students and promoting innovative programs. SES tutoring is provided free of charge to parents for students who are eligible for free or reduced lunch and that attend a Title I school that has not made Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, for three or more years. The aim of this tutoring is to ensure that all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, have access to tutoring to help improve their academic scores. The purpose of this research was to examine the practices of SES providers in a large metropolitan school district to examine the pedagogical practices, the qualifications of SES providers, and the accountability measures in place to ensure maximum student academic gains. Through an anonymous online survey taken by SES providers, as well as interviewing the SES coordinator in the target district, I was able to gain a clearer understanding of the SES system. My findings are consistent with other key studies across the nation (Munoz, Potter, & Ross, 2008; Rickles & White, 2006); that is, that little accountability among SES providers to districts could result in questionable student academic gains. Because of research such as this, new federal legislation is currently being drafted to issue states waivers from the restrictions of mandatory NCLB Title I budgets, wherein 5 to 15% were allocated to SES tutoring (McNeil, 2011).

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-2210
Date01 December 2011
CreatorsBlair, Kristin
PublisherSTARS
Source SetsUniversity of Central Florida
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceHIM 1990-2015

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