Editorial: School unaccountability

Tuesday, June 12, 2007 | 6:58 a.m.

T his past school year the Clark County School District spent nearly $5 million to hire tutors for students at underachieving schools, yet district officials have no idea whether that money actually helped students improve.

Chalk this up as another failure of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The act mandates and pays for the private tutoring, yet it provides no money or resources to follow up to determine whether the tutoring is successful and how well the private tutoring companies perform.

As Emily Richmond reported in Monday's Las Vegas Sun, federal law does not have any requirements regarding standards for tutors. The law also ties a school district's hands regarding tutoring. School districts do not choose which companies can provide tutors; the state does. And schools are hindered from ensuring quality.

For example, last fall a company called StudentNest came to Clark County and promised a free computer and Internet access to any family that signed up for tutoring. As of early spring only three of the 63 families that signed up had received the computers, which were reported to be refurbished and in poor condition.

A district official described the situation as "a total bust," yet there is nothing the School District can do about it. Federal law prevents school districts from letting parents know about a tutoring company's performance, and a district cannot ask the state to remove a company from the list of acceptable tutors until the company has been on the list for two years. So StudentNest could certainly come back next year.

This is sadly ironic considering that the No Child Left Behind Act was pushed by the Bush administration as a method of accountability for the nation's public schools. If the federal government wants accountability, it needs to give the schools the ability and resources to be accountable.