The Tutoring They Deserve (Update)

Seems like I'm not the only one who thinks that Chicago's NCLB tutoring program may not be quite as good as it should be, whether CPS is running the show or the private providers are in charge:

"Tutoring program gets low grades" (Chicago Sun-Times)
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-tutor17.html

As the article reveals, there are some problems all around, and lots of underlying tensions, as well as many successes that won't get reported.

Since the kids, the instructors, and the sites are basically all the same regardless of who is nominally running the program, it really boils down in my mind to coverage, class size, and quality control.

The Board's program emphasizes coverage -- getting the tutoring out to as many kids as possible, largely by creating somewhat larger class sizes, and while they don't take any profit out of it I still don't think that's the way to go.

See post below for more on this.

PS -- I'm told that the private providers don't offer class sizes that are half the size of the CPS tutoring program. Sorry about that. However, they are substantially smaller classes than the CPS goal of 15 kids per class.