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Thursday, December 13, 2007
Tutoring Firms: Worth The Cost?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Another private tutoring firm has been kicked off the state’s list of approved providers, potentially sending hundreds of families scrambling to find new tutors in the midst of a school year.
Members of the State Board of Education removed Stone-Mountain based Fabric of America from the program Thursday morning, saying the company had not conducted a criminal background check on one employee.
Representatives of the tutoring firm, which was working with roughly 700 students (they say) in seven school systems — including Atlanta, Cobb, Clayton, DeKalb and Fulton — said it was all a misunderstanding. The employee in question wasn’t an employee at all, Vice President Domonique Scott told me, but rather a job candidate who was never hired.
State officials paid the company a surprise visit last month after receiving numerous complaints from school system administrators and parents. Investigators said they found one employee working at the site who did not have a criminal background check in his personnel file — a state requirement.
Since 2002, the Supplemental Educational Services program has provided extra, private, free tutoring for kids attending public schools that fail to meet academic standards under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Last school year, more than $9.2 million in federal funds went to private tutoring companies working in the program here in Georgia.
The question: Is that money being spent wisely?
