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20-815 PDF 2005

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: 

SUPPLEMENTAL TUTORING 

FOR CHILDREN IN UNDERACHIEVING SCHOOLS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 

AND THE WORKFORCE 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

April 26, 2005

Serial No. 109-11

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house 

or 

Committee address: http://edworkforce.house.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio, Chairman

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin, Vice Chairman 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware 

Sam Johnson, Texas 

Mark E. Souder, Indiana 

Charlie Norwood, Georgia 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Patrick J. Tiberi, Ohio 

Ric Keller, Florida 

Tom Osborne, Nebraska 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

Jon C. Porter, Nevada 

John Kline, Minnesota 

Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado 

Bob Inglis, South Carolina 

Cathy McMorris, Washington 

Kenny Marchant, Texas 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Luis G. Fortun ̃ o, Puerto Rico 

Bobby Jindal, Louisiana 

Charles W. Boustany, Jr., Louisiana 

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 

Thelma D. Drake, Virginia 

John R. ‘‘Randy’’ Kuhl, Jr., New York 

George Miller, California 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan 

Major R. Owens, New York 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. Scott, Virginia 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Ron Kind, Wisconsin 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

David Wu, Oregon 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Betty McCollum, Minnesota 

Danny K. Davis, Illinois 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Chris Van Hollen, Maryland 

Tim Ryan, Ohio 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

John Barrow, Georgia

Paula Nowakowski, Staff Director 

John Lawrence, Minority Staff Director 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Hearing held on April 26, 2005 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of Members: 

Boehner, Hon. John A., Chairman, Committee on Education and the 

Workforce ....................................................................................................... 1

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3

Miller, Hon. George, Ranking Member, Committee on Education and 

the Workforce ................................................................................................ 4

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 6

Woolsey, Hon. Lynn C., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 44

Statement of Witnesses: 

Cohen, Jeffrey, President, Catapult Learning, Inc., Baltimore, MD ............ 17

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 20

Nola-Ganey, Donna, Assistant Superintendent, Office of School and Community Improvement, Louisiana Department of Education, Baton 

Rouge, LA ...................................................................................................... 8

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 10

Swanson, Elizabeth, Director, Office of After School and Community Programs, Chicago, IL ........................................................................................ 22

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 24

Teasley, Kevin, Founder and President, GEO Foundation, Indianapolis, 

IN ................................................................................................................... 12

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 15

(1)

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND: SUPPLEMENTAL TUTORING FOR CHILDREN IN UNDERACHIEVING SCHOOLS 

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

U.S. House of Representatives 

Committee on Education and the Workforce 

Washington, DC 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 1:30 p.m., in room 2175, 

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John A. Boehner (chairman 

of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Boehner, Castle, Biggert, Osborne, 

Kline, McMorris, Price, Boustany, Miller, Kildee, Woolsey, Tierney, 

Davis of California, McCollum, Davis of Illinois and Van Hollen. 

Staff Present: Kevin Frank, Professional Staff Member; Lucy 

House, Legislative Assistant; Melanie Looney, Professional Staff 

Member; Sally Lovejoy, Director of Education and Human Resources Policy; Alexa Marrero, Press Secretary; Krisann Pearce, 

Deputy Director of Education and Human Resources Policy; Deborah L. Samantar, Committee Clerk/Intern Coordinator; Alice Cain, 

Minority Legislative Associate/Education; Lloyd Horwich, Minority 

Legislative Associate/Education; Ricardo Martinez, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; Alex Nock, Legislative Associate/Education; and Joe Novotny, Legislative Associate/Education. 

Chairman BOEHNER. The Committee on Education and the 

Workforce will come to order. We are holding this hearing today to 

hear testimony on No Child Left Behind: Supplemental Tutoring 

for Children in Underachieving Schools. Under the committee 

rules, opening statements are limited to the chairman and Ranking 

Member. So if there are other Members who have statements, they 

will be included in the hearing record. And with that, I ask unanimous consent that the hearing record remain open for 14 days to 

allow Member statements and other material referenced during the 

hearing to be submitted for the official hearing record. Without objection, so ordered. 

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN A. BOEHNER, CHAIRMAN 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

Chairman BOEHNER. Parental choice in education is one of the 

pillars of the No Child Left Behind Act. And I believe all parents, 

regardless of race, income or status, should have the right to 

choose where they believe are the best possible schools for their 

2

children. I believe it is particularly essential that we give this right 

to parents of children who would otherwise be trapped in chronically underachieving schools. 

Congress has taken two important steps toward this goal under 

President Bush. Last year we created the bipartisan D.C. School 

choice program, creating the first federally funded school choice 

program in the country. And in April 2002, No Child Left Behind 

was signed into law. 

No Child Left Behind not only provides parents with access to information, but also guarantees parents the right to do something 

with that information when it is clear that the schools their children are attending are not getting the job done. Low-income parents with children in public schools identified as in need of improvement for 2 or more consecutive years must be provided the 

opportunity to obtain supplemental education services such as private tutoring paid for with their children’s share of Federal Title 

I funds. Parents with children in schools identified as in need of 

improvement for 1 year or more are given the right to transfer 

their children to better-performing public or charter schools provided one is available. 

Private tutoring has proved to be the far more popular of the two 

options amongst parents. This is not a surprise because the public 

school provision—school choice provisions in No Child Left Behind 

are compromised. And when you offer parents a limited choice, you 

are going to get a mixed response. When you offer parents the full 

range of options, I think you are going to get a better response. We 

are seeing that right now in the District of Columbia where the 

Washington Post recently reported that parental demand for the 

new D.C. School choice scholarships has outnumbered the supply 

by two to one. 

Similarly, No Child Left Behind’s tutoring provisions present 

parents with a full range of options when it comes to obtaining 

supplemental educational services from quality providers. Private 

providers, including faith-based providers, are eligible to provide 

tutoring services, and the response from parents has been considerable, even despite evidence some districts are wrongly limiting the 

range of options available to parents or failing to provide parents 

with adequate notice about their rights. 

During the No Child Left Behind legislative process, some legislators, including this one, wanted the supplemental services option 

to kick in immediately for parents as soon as the school was identified by its State as in need of improvement. Some of us also believed that the law should specify that school districts identified 

under No Child Left Behind as underachieving or needing improvement should not be permitted to serve as tutoring providers. Supplemental educational services are meant to provide a supplement 

for the education of children and not—and for those not receiving 

it from underachieving school districts as those districts work to 

improve. 

We ended up with something that was a vast improvement over 

previous law, but didn’t go quite as far as we would have liked, at 

least not as far as I would have like. We passed a law that required 

tutoring options only for disadvantaged children in schools designated by their States as in need of improvement for 2 or more 

3

consecutive years. The law also effectively left it to the U.S. Secretary of Education to determine whether an underachieving school 

district could provide supplemental services to its students. While 

the Secretary has implemented regulations that prohibit a district 

identified as in need of improvement from serving as a tutoring 

provider, some districts have challenged that regulation. 

When Congress revisits No Child Left Behind at some point in 

the future, we will—we won’t set in stone when—there will be 

heavy pressure from interest groups that want changes that would 

weaken the accountability system at the heart of this bipartisan 

education reform law, and my hope is that Congress will continue 

to resist the temptation to make such shortsighted changes and 

will improve on the law by addressing both of these issues as part 

of any reauthorization process. 

Last, while public schools have a responsibility to children, parents and taxpayers, private tutoring providers do, too. Many in the 

tutoring industry have voluntarily adopted quality standards to ensure that the principles of No Child Left Behind are honored, and 

I applaud the industry for taking these steps. I also expect Secretary Spellings at the Department of Education will soon be providing further guidance on this topic. 

My hope is that the Department’s forthcoming guidance will provide appropriate safeguards for children and taxpayers without 

stepping on States rights or discouraging quality providers from offering their services to disadvantaged children. 

With that, I would like to say thanks to the witnesses for being 

here today and would yield to my friend and colleague from California Mr. Miller. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Boehner follows:]

Statement of Hon. John A. Boehner, Chairman, Committee on Education 

and the Workforce 

Parental choice in education is one of the pillars of the No Child Left Behind Act. 

I believe all parents, regardless of race, income, or status, should have the right 

to choose what they believe are the best possible schools for their children. I believe 

it’s particularly essential that we give this right to the parents of children who 

would otherwise be trapped in chronically underachieving public schools. 

Congress has taken two important steps toward this goal under President Bush. 

Last year, we created the bipartisan D.C. school choice program, creating the first 

federally-funded school choice program in the country. And in 2002, the No Child 

Left Behind Act was signed into law. 

No Child Left Behind not only provides parents with access to information, but 

also guarantees parents the right to do something with that information when it is 

clear the schools their children attend are not getting the job done. Low-income parents with children in public schools identified as needing improvement for two or 

more consecutive years must be provided the opportunity to obtain supplemental 

educational services such as private tutoring, paid for with their children’s share of 

federal Title I funds. Parents with children in schools identified as needing improvement for one year or more are given the right to transfer their children to betterperforming public or charter schools, provided one is available. 

Private tutoring has proved to be the far more popular of the two options among 

parents. This is not a surprise, because the public school choice provisions in No 

Child Left Behind are a compromise. When you offer parents a limited choice, you’re 

going to get a mixed response. When you offer parents the full range of options, 

you’re going to get a better response. We’re seeing that right now in the District 

of Columbia, where the Washington Post recently reported that parental demand for 

the new D.C. choice scholarships is outnumbering the supply by 2 to 1. 

Similarly, No Child Left Behind’s tutoring provisions present parents with the full 

range of options when it comes to obtaining supplemental educational services from 

quality providers. Private providers, including faith-based providers, are eligible to 

4

provide tutoring services—and the response from parents has been considerable, 

even despite evidence some districts are wrongly limiting the range of options available to parents, or failing to provide parents with adequate notice about their rights. 

During the No Child Left Behind legislative process, some legislators, including 

this one, wanted the supplemental services options to kick in immediately for parents, as soon as a school was identified by its state as needing improvement. Some 

of us also believed the law should specify that school districts identified under No 

Child Left Behind as underachieving or needing improvement should not be permitted to serve as tutoring providers. Supplemental educational services are meant 

to provide a supplement for the education children are not receiving from underachieving school districts, as those districts work to improve. 

We ended up with something that was a vast improvement over previous law, but 

didn’t go quite as far as we would have liked. We passed a law that required tutoring options only for disadvantaged children in schools designated by their states as 

needing improvement for two or more consecutive years. The law also effectively left 

it to the U.S. Secretary of Education to determine whether an underachieving school 

district could provide supplemental services to its students. While the Secretary has 

implemented regulations that prohibit a district identified as in need of improvement from serving as a tutoring provider, some districts have challenged that regulation. 

When Congress revisits No Child Left Behind in 2007, there will be heavy pressure from lobbying groups that want changes that would weaken the accountability 

system at the heart of this bipartisan education reform law. My hope is that Congress will continue to resist the temptation to make such short-sighted changes, and 

will improve on the law by addressing both of these issues as part of any reauthorization package. 

[Lastly, while public schools have a responsibility to children, parents, and taxpayers, private tutoring providers do too. Many in the tutoring industry have voluntarily adopted quality standards to ensure the principles of No Child Left Behind 

are honored. I applaud the industry for taking these steps. I also expect that Secretary Spellings and the Department of Education will soon be providing further 

guidance on this topic. My hope is that the Department’s forthcoming guidance will 

provide appropriate safeguards for children and taxpayers without stepping on 

states’ rights or discouraging quality providers from offering their services to disadvantaged children.] 

With that, I’d like to welcome the witnesses who have joined us today, and I 

would turn to the senior Democratic member, Mr. Miller, for any opening statement 

he may wish to make. 

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE MILLER, RANKING MEMBER, 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling 

this hearing. I think this hearing is terribly important and timely 

as we look at the question of not only the issue of supplemental 

services right now, but what is going to happen in the future with 

these services as they become more in demand. And I thank you 

for the panelists you have assembled. 

No Child Left Behind takes important steps to ensure that lowincome children have access to after-school tutoring that their 

middle- and high-income peers have always had. Our witnesses 

today have a range of experience in this area, and I am eager to 

hear their perspectives on implementation of the No Child Left Behind supplemental educational services provisions to date, particularly with the thoughts of how Congress and the Department of 

Education can and should be doing to make sure that children are 

consistently getting high-quality services. 

I recently spent 2 days in Chicago meeting with teachers, principals, parents and district administrators about their reform over 

the past decade. Their progress is real, substantial and very encouraging. And I want to thank them for sending Ms. Swanson 

today to share her experiences with this provision of the goal. 

5

A key goal of No Child Left Behind is to eliminate the achievement gap among low-income and minority children. For years we 

didn’t want to talk about the kids at the bottom. Now we are talking, and while it is getting heated at times, overall it has been a 

healthy debate, and it is leading to important changes. 

One way the law tries to address the achievement gap is through 

what is often falsely and in sort of a bizarre fashion referred to as 

a sanction; the idea that you would offer these tutoring and supplemental services is somehow viewed as a sanction by many within 

the educational accomplishment. I would consider and I think the 

parents have demonstrated that they consider this an added benefit for their children, the opportunity to participate in ongoing 

after-school tutoring to improve their academic achievement. 

No Child Left Behind gives low-income parents the ability to 

choose from among a range of approved providers for their children. I am concerned, however, that all too often parents are being 

offered providers that are not necessarily effective or appropriate 

because the States do not live up to their monitoring and oversight 

responsibilities. I am concerned that the Department of Education 

is encouraging States to err on the side of offering many choices 

at the expense of ensuring high-quality choices. 

I am also concerned that parents of children with disabilities and 

limited English proficiencies are not being given the same choices 

as other parents due to the Department of Education’s regulation 

that seems to prohibit school districts in need of improvement from 

continuing the supplemental service providers except for students 

of disabilities and LEP students. While school districts may be 

uniquely suited to continue these services, it is worth asking why 

these parents shouldn’t have more choices like other parents do. 

The law itself does not prohibit districts from continuing as providers for all children, and they have proven and have often 

reached more children at lower costs with the same teachers. This 

is a regulatory problem, and a practical effect of this legislation is 

that a provider who is not deemed to be suitable for all students 

due to the quality concerns is deemed to be acceptable for students 

with disabilities and English learners. I hope the Department will 

rethink their regulations on this. 

Finally, I am concerned about the reports of inducements such 

as parents being given free computers, discount coupons, signing 

bonuses in exchange for selecting certain providers for their children. This bill was designed to provide competition. It was designed to provide for entrepreneurship. It was designed to provide 

for the private sector to participate in the education of these children and the nonprofits and others outlined in the bill. It was not 

designed for a lot of suede-shoe operators to come in and offer programs that aren’t tested, that have no history of effectiveness, and 

are providing inducements to parents to get them to select that 

particular program. And many of these are now coming out of the 

woodwork and preying on parents and putting undue and inappropriate pressure on them to select providers that may not be the 

most qualified or the best suited to tutor their children. 

I am very interested in the thoughts of our witnesses how we can 

assure that we provide these children the high-quality providers 

that are approved by the State. A number of my colleagues, I am 

6

including Representatives Kildee, Woolsey, Andrews, McCollum, recently requested a GAO investigation as to how States are implementing supplemental service provisions. This includes a look at 

the steps that the States are taking or not taking to ensure that 

approved providers are offering high-quality services, how academic 

content is being taught by supplemental service providers in alliance with the district and the State standards and the curriculum, 

because, again, we are starting to get a significant number of complaints that the supplemental providers have little to do with the 

curriculum that the children are being taught and the impact of 

supplemental services on student achievement. 

I think these are important questions. I am delighted that my 

colleagues joined in asking these questions of the GAO because 

they are very important when we are envisioning, as many have 

suggested, that this may be a $2 billion expenditure of funds. We 

have to know the effectiveness of these programs and the quality 

of these programs. 

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the testimony of 

the witnesses and thank you again for calling this hearing. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Thank you, Mr. Miller. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Miller follows:]

Statement of Hon. George Miller, Ranking Member, Committee on 

Education and the Workforce 

Good morning. I would like to thank Chairman Boehner for calling this hearing. 

I’m looking forward to today’s hearing because it focuses on implementation of an 

important NCLB provision: supplemental educational services. 

No Child Left Behind takes important steps to ensure that low-income children 

have access to the after school tutoring that their middle and high-income peers 

have always had. 

Our witnesses have a range of experiences in this area and I am eager to hear 

their perspectives on implementation of NCLB’s supplemental education services 

provisions to date, particularly their thoughts on what Congress and the Department of Education can and should be doing to make sure that children are consistently getting high-quality services. 

I recently spent two days in Chicago meeting with teachers, principals and parents about the reforms there over the past decade. Their progress is real, substantial, and very encouraging. I congratulate them for their progress and am particularly interested in hearing from the representative from Chicago Public Schools 

about their experience with this provision of the law. 

A key goal of NCLB, which I know all of us share, is to eliminate the achievement 

gap among low-income and minority children. For years we didn’t want to talk 

about kids at the bottom. Now we are and, while it can get heated at times, overall 

it’s been healthy and it’s leading to important changes. 

One way the law tries to address the achievement gap is through what is often 

falsely referred to as a ‘‘sanction’’—but what I consider to be an added benefit to 

low-income children: the opportunity to participate in ongoing after school tutoring 

to improve their academic achievement. 

While the intent of this provision is good, recent reports on the Department of 

Education’s implementation of this provision are troubling. 

We hear a lot about the importance of NCLB’s disaggregated data empowering 

parents across the country. Something we hear less about is the power NCLB gives 

low-income parents to choose from among a range of approved providers for their 

children. I am concerned, however, that all too often parents are being offered providers that are not necessarily effective or appropriate when states do not live up 

to their monitoring and oversight responsibilities. I am concerned that the Department of Education is encouraging states to err on the side of offering many choices 

at the expense of ensuring quality choices. 

I am also concerned that parents of children with disabilities and children with 

Limited English Proficiency are not being given the same choices as their peers due 

to the Department of Education’s regulation that prohibits LEAs ‘‘in need of improvement’’ from continuing as supplemental service providers. 

7

A fundamental problem with this policy is that it is inconsistent and unfair to students with disabilities and students with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) because 

LEAs ‘‘in need of improvement’’ do continue to provide these services to these children, as necessary. The practical effect of this regulation is that a provider that is 

not deemed suitable for all students due to quality concerns is deemed acceptable 

for students with disabilities and LEP students. The law itself does not prohibit districts from continuing as providers for all children, and they have proven they can 

often reach more children at a lower cost with the same teachers. I hope the Department will re-think its regulations on this. 

Finally, I am very concerned about reports of inducements—such as parents being 

given free computers, discount coupons, or signing bonuses—in exchange for selecting certain providers for their children. Suede-shoe operators are coming out of the 

woodwork and, in some cases, preying on parents and putting undue and inappropriate pressure on them to select providers that may not be the most qualified or 

best suited to tutor their children. I am very interested in the thoughts of the witnesses as to how we can ensure that only high-quality providers are approved. 

A number of my colleagues and I—including Representatives Kildee, Woolsey, Andrews, and McCollum—recently requested a GAO investigation of how states are 

implementing NCLB’s supplemental educational services provisions. This includes a 

look at steps states are taking—or not taking—to ensure that approved providers 

are offering high-quality services, how academic content being taught by supplemental service providers aligns with district and state standards and curriculum, 

and the impact of supplemental education services on student achievement. 

Finally, I believe the best thing Congress could do to help fulfill the promise of 

NCLB is to fully fund the law at the level we and the President promised when it 

was enacted. To date we are $39 billion short, and this shortfall impacts schools 

across the board, including, I would assume, the capacity of states to monitor the 

quality of supplemental education service providers. While I have never suggested 

that improving education is only about money, but we cannot and will not get there 

without it. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BOEHNER. We have a distinguished panel of witnesses 

here today, and to introduce our first witness, the Chair would recognize the gentleman from Louisiana Mr. Boustany. 

Mr. BOUSTANY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased to 

introduce Donna Nola-Ganey, the assistant superintendent of the 

Louisiana Department of Education Office of School and Community Support. Ms. Ganey has served in an administrative capacity 

in the department of education for over 20 years and also has 

served as a teacher in the East Baton Rouge Parish school system. 

Her current responsibilities include administration of the division 

of nutrition assistance; the division of family, career and technical 

education; the division of school and community support. Some of 

the program areas under her direction are nutrition; health; afterschool/migrant education; Title IV Safe and Drug-Free Schools and 

Communities; and most relevant to this hearing, supplemental educational services. 

Ms. Nola-Ganey has received both her bachelor’s degree and 

master’s degree from Louisiana State University, and I am honored 

to introduce such a distinguished individual from our great State 

of Louisiana Ms. Donna Nola-Ganey. 

Chairman BOEHNER. I will introduce the other three panelists, 

and then we will proceed. 

Our second witness today will be Mr. Kevin Teasley. Mr. Teasley 

founded the nonprofit GEO Foundation in 1998 upon the belief that 

all children should have access to a quality education. And through 

its outreach in programs, the GEO Foundation strives to make educational choice a reality by empowering families in the creation of 

new options. In implementing that notion, the GEO foundation has 

8

been approved by Indiana as a supplemental educational services 

provider and currently providing services in Indianapolis Public 

Schools and Gary Public Schools. 

We will then hear from Jeffrey Cohen. Mr. Cohen is president of 

Catapult Learning, formerly Sylvan Educational Solutions, the Nation’s leading provider of instructional and support services to 

schools and school districts. At the beginning of the 2003–2004 

school year, Catapult Learning was approved as a supplemental 

educational services provider in 31 States. And while at Sylvan, 

Mr. Cohen also established the Sylvan Learning Foundation, the 

best practices in K through 12 and higher education, and served as 

the foundation’s executive director. 

Then we will hear from Ms. Beth Swanson. Ms. Swanson serves 

as the director of the Office of After-School and Community School 

Programs for the Chicago Public Schools. In this capacity Ms. 

Swanson helps to ensure there is a diverse offering of high-quality 

programs available to Chicago public school students outside of 

their regular school day, including seven major after-school initiatives. She is also appointed to or is serving on the State Leadership 

Team, the Illinois After-School Partnership, the After-School Task 

Force, and Renaissance of 2010, an education support group. 

So you all know about the time line. You get 5 minutes. You 

need a little more, don’t get nervous, just take it. We are pretty 

nice here. 

With that, Ms. Nola-Ganey, you may begin. 

STATEMENT OF DONNA NOLA-GANEY, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT, OFFICE OF SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY IMPROVEMENT, LOUISIANA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, 

BATON ROUGE, LA 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

committee. It is an honor to be here to have the opportunity to tell 

you about Louisiana’s supplemental educational services program. 

I am going to get right into the presentation. I believe we have a 

PowerPoint, or we did have a PowerPoint—there it is. Thank you. 

I would like to focus on three areas: Our monitoring and oversight of SES at the State level, including our Web-based student 

tracking and reporting system that we call STARS; our planned 

evaluation; and a few recommendations for other States. 

Currently Louisiana has 26 SES providers on our State-approved 

list. Forty-five schools in five school districts are required to offer 

SES, with 40 of those 45 schools in New Orleans. We are serving 

3,700 students currently in SES. 

Now, Mr. Miller, a great deal of effort goes into our selection of 

the providers in Louisiana. We take extra steps to ensure that only 

quality providers are included on the State-approved list. And in 

the testimony that I have provided, I have listed ways that we 

have done that. 

As far as our monitoring process, we make at least two site visits 

a year to the providers, using our monitoring instrument that we 

developed to document program compliance. Additionally, both the 

State and the district have the ability to monitor student attendance and progress daily through our on-line data system, and because of this we are able to target providers for technical assistance 

9

to ensure that students are getting the best possible tutoring services. 

Let me tell you a little bit about our student tracking system. As 

we, like many other States, struggle to implement SES, our Webbased student tracking and reporting system has proven to be a 

great benefit. We can tell which students receive a service and how 

much of it they receive. We use the STARS data tracking with two 

other of our after-school programs that we administer. Therefore, 

the program’s development costs were shared, and it was affordable 

for us to do this, providers’ input, student attendance and contact 

hours, and they use the system to invoice districts for services rendered. So as a result, the State and the district have 24/7 access 

to the information. 

All the STARS is completely Web-based. It provides the highest 

level of security possible, and it is housed on a secure——

Mr. MILLER. When you say it is Web-based, is this a system you 

designed, or are you using a larger Web-based system? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. We designed it with a contractor. 

The STARS is completely web-based, but it provides the highest 

level of security possible, and it is housed on a secure SQL server 

along with a copy of our statewide student information system. And 

because Louisiana has a student information system for all public 

school students in kindergarten through 12th grade, we are able to 

match the STARS data with the student information data to be 

able to validate that students are, in fact, SES services in eligible 

Title I schools. And we have safety checks built in as well, so that 

students can’t be enrolled in multiple programs scheduled for the 

same day and the same time. 

And let me just show you a few slides of our screens for the 

STARS system. This is our enrollment screen, and this is the first 

step for providers to enter into the system. And then the session 

calendar, each provider has a calendar that can be accessed, and 

you click on the class day and the time, and you will be able to see 

which student is scheduled by each provider. 

And then this is the provider’s monthly billing report. This report 

is automatically generated from the attendance and contact hours 

that are entered by the providers. And this is the main reason providers don’t complain about having to input the data, because they 

benefit from having the billing forms automatically generated. 

And you can see the many reports that are available, from the 

class roster to the student retention reports. But probably of all 

these reports up here, the most useful, especially for the State, is 

the program statistics report. With this report, you can’t see it 

clearly up there, I apologize, but this report compiles all the program information on each provider, and it allows the State to look 

what is going on with each provider on a daily basis, and that allows us to do targeted assistance with each of the providers who 

are not meeting their goals. 

Quickly, the evaluation system. We have contracted with Dr. 

Steve Ross from the Center For Research in Education Policy to do 

a formal comprehensive evaluation of the program in Louisiana. 

Because of our data system, we will be able to measure students’ 

gains by matching students who participated in the program with 

our State test data. We don’t have to rely on the providers to just 

10

give us their pre-post data. We can actually match State data with 

the students who participate in the program. Hopefully we are 

going to be able to have a better understanding of how many hours 

of tutoring it takes to increase student achievement. 

Also included in the evaluation design is to look at students in 

a school who participated in SES versus the students in the same 

school who didn’t participate in SES. And Dr. Ross is working with 

our data people to try to get that information all the way down to 

the classroom level. And then also we have surveys of teachers, 

parents and principals included in the evaluation design. 

Some key recommendations for States. I was asked to give you 

a few key recommendations, and one is—the only one I am going 

to talk about from the list is we recommend that a student tracking 

system be implemented in States. It is critical in order to get a 

handle on the daily operations of what is going on with the service 

providers. 

What we are learning. Finally I would like to tell you what we 

are learning as we work diligently to implement this part of the No 

Child Left Behind Act. Attendance in these programs is a major 

challenge, but even more so are the completion rates of students. 

Part of the problem is lack of parents’ involvement or understanding of the importance of these services. So the State may need 

to step in and help make the community aware of the program so 

that more parents will take advantage of it. 

This year the department of education conducted a campaign in 

New Orleans. We had billboards, radio spots, cable car signs and 

flyers plastered all over the community. We reached out to the 

faith-based community to help us get the word out. They talked to 

parents from the pulpit. We did have a significant increase in the 

enrollment in New Orleans, but it was not nearly enough. There 

are 18,000 students who qualify in New Orleans alone, and statewide we only serve 3,700. We continue to try to make SES in Louisiana help to increase student achievement. 

And with that, here is my contact information, and we are more 

than willing to share with you or any other State. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Nola-Ganey follows:]

Statement of Donna Nola–Ganey, Assistant Superintendent, Office of 

School and Community Improvement, Louisiana Department of Education, Baton Rouge, LA 

Louisiana is one among many states working diligently to meet and, if possible, 

exceed the expectations set forth by the NCLB Act. The Louisiana Department of 

Education is proud of its progressive implementation of effective and meaningful 

Supplemental Educational Services (SES). Currently, there are 26 Supplemental 

Education Services providers in Louisiana, servicing 46 schools and nearly 3,700 

students. 

In brief, here is a description of how Louisiana tracks and monitors Supplemental 

Education Services. 

Using a rigorous selection process, the Louisiana Department of Education has a 

follow-up meeting face-to-face or a telephone interview with all applicants before 

final recommendations are sent to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. The RFP requires that applicants have a design for an Individual Learning 

Plan, along with measurement of individual student progress, pre- and post- assessments using CRTs or NRTs, a strong connection between assessment and instruction, and a strong connection between instruction and standards. The interview allows us to make certain that high scoring applicants can validate their program design and capacity to serve students. Applicants apply to become ‘‘fully approved’’ or 

‘‘new and emerging providers.’’ New and emerging providers have limited evidence 

11

of effectiveness in providing similar academic services to students. New and emerging providers also have a cap on enrollment of 200 students served per school year; 

however, the fully approved provider meets all requirements for providing high 

quality SES, and their enrollment is unlimited. 

Approved providers as well as district personnel are required to attend department-sponsored workshops to become familiar with state expectations relative to 

supplemental education services, assessment, the state’s web-based data tracking 

system, and state monitoring guidelines for compliance with NCLB. 

Each supplemental education provider is officially monitored on site at least two 

times a year, with technical assistance offered by the department on an as-needed 

basis, in addition to occasional unannounced visits. 

A department monitoring instrument is used to document the programmatic compliance of a provider’s service as it relates to the tutoring model initially approved 

by the state. If the program is able to adequately demonstrate that it is following 

the guidelines approved by the state and is fulfilling the promise of sound targeted 

remediation, the provider is deemed to be ‘‘in compliance,’’ and a letter from the 

State Superintendent of Education indicating such is sent to the provider, accompanied by a copy of the completed monitoring instrument. 

In the event a provider is not meeting the state’s guidelines for an effective supplemental education provider, the program is then deemed ‘‘out of compliance.’’ The 

State Superintendent of Education sends a letter articulating the program’s deficiencies to the provider, copied to the district superintendent, requesting a ‘‘plan of 

action’’ to correct the deficiencies be submitted to the department in no more than 

30 days from the receipt of the letter. 

All Supplemental Education Service providers are required to maintain program 

data, including class sessions, student attendance, academic progress on pre- and 

post- assessments, and basic student demographic information using a web-based 

Student Tracking and Reporting System, referred to as ‘‘STARS.’’ Louisiana Department of Education staff is able to regularly monitor a provider’s usage of STARS, 

ensuring the provider is entering and maintaining vital student data in a timely 

manner. At the beginning of the 2004–2005 school year, Louisiana Department of Education staff set up statewide, one-day training sessions to introduce STARS to stateapproved providers and district-level personnel. Subsequent to these one-day training sessions, department staff provided technical assistance by phone, site visits, 

and scheduled one-on-one sessions. A Help Desk is also available if problems arise. 

The STARS database system was developed in response to the need to systematically qualify and quantify the various interventions provided outside of the regular 

school day, while at the same time assisting providers, schools, and the state to 

manage and evaluate programs. 

Once a provider has been ‘‘set up’’ in STARS by the state administrator, the provider is able to establish and define sites, create sessions (classes), enroll students, 

and generate forms. A site-level user can only enter and maintain attendance, modify attendance calendars, and generate pre-designated forms relative to his/her specific site. 

The ‘‘sessions’’ created by a provider are based upon the days and times of service, 

with ‘‘safety checks’’ built in so that students cannot be enrolled in multiple programs scheduled for the same day and time. SES providers select from a menu that 

includes math, reading, or language arts, and they have fields to record pre- and 

post-tests. 

Once the sessions are created, they are populated with students drawn from the 

Louisiana Department of Education’s Student Information System, also known as 

‘‘SIS,’’ which is loaded into the same server housing STARS. Attendance and class 

rosters are automatically created in the STARS student database once a session is 

populated. 

STARS is currently used to track individual students served through Supplemental Education Services, Teen Pregnancy Prevention, and after school programs 

funded by the Office of School and Community Support. By identifying unique subgroups of students by the services and interventions they receive, the department 

can then match state test files, dropout data, retentions, special needs status, and 

other individual student information to measure impacts. Because many of the technical aspects of matching individual student data are ‘‘behind the screens,’’ student 

privacy is protected. 

Currently, the Louisiana Department of Education uses STARS to collect and organize student enrollment and attendance data by district, school, provider, hours 

of service, average daily attendance, program completion, pre- and post–SES scores, 

free/reduced lunch status, and demographics. Once a provider has been ‘‘set up’’ in 

STARS, the provider is able to establish and define sites, create classes or sessions, 

12

enroll students, and generate forms. A site-level user can only enter and maintain 

attendance, modify attendance calendars, and generate pre-designated forms relative to his/her specific site. 

The ‘‘sessions’’ created by a provider are based upon the days and times of service, 

with ‘‘safety checks’’ built in so that students cannot be enrolled in multiple programs scheduled for the same day and time. SES providers select from a menu that 

includes math, reading, or language arts. 

Once the sessions are created, they are populated with students drawn from the 

Louisiana Department of Education’s Student Information System, also known as 

‘‘SIS.’’ Attendance and class rosters are automatically created in the database once 

a session is populated. 

Because STARS was designed from the start to be a tool for the different stakeholders, monthly billing forms include an alphabetical listing of students by name 

and school, a complete attendance record for each student for the billing period, and 

the remaining per pupil allocation (PPA). With these documents, districts as well 

as providers with multiple sites can oversee the activity and effort put forth at each 

site and by each program. 

On a more basic level, STARS affords providers a user-friendly medium with 

which to track enrollment and attendance and which, with a click of the mouse, generates the monthly billing invoice to be submitted to the districts. 

The Department of Education or a state-level administrator enters the initial information about a provider and the individual contract into STARS. 

Although STARS is completely web-based, it provides the highest level of security 

possible and is housed on a secure SQL server along with a copy of the statewide 

Student Information System. 

The Louisiana Department of Education purposely assumed an instrumental role 

in the database design not with the motive of creating a reporting instrument to 

make the department’s job easier, but rather with the specific intent to create a tool 

for providers with safety checks for districts. Consequently, the department has a 

database that is extremely rational and practical, highly utilized, and protective of 

individual student information. 

The STARS database comes very close to providing an ideal, single reporting system that meets the individual needs of providers, schools, districts and the state. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Mr. Teasley. 

STATEMENT OF KEVIN TEASLEY, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, 

GEO FOUNDATION, INDIANAPOLIS, IN 

Mr. TEASLEY. Thank you for having me, Chairman. I was very 

impressed with that presentation and what I heard, but that is not 

what you asked me to come here and talk about. Chairman 

Boehner and Ranking Member Miller and Members of Congress, 

thank you for this opportunity to provide testimony to you regarding the important issue of supplemental education services. I am 

humbled by your invitation to speak today and hope that my comments provide you some valuable input to help you form future policy recommendations and laws. 

GEO Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was founded in 1998. Today GEO has four main 

programs. We have operated a charter school in Indianapolis for 

the past 3 years, and we are scheduled to open three more charter 

schools this fall: An additional one in Indianapolis, one in Gary, Indiana, and one in Colorado Springs. We also operate a Charter 

School Service Center to assist in the success of all charter schools 

in the State of Indiana. 

In addition, we are a recipient of a U.S. Department of Education 

grant, Parent Information and Resource Center grant, that provides us the opportunity to engage and educate parents in the understanding of their rights and opportunities afforded them under 

No Child Left Behind. The PIRC grant is centered on the IndianapVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:57 Oct 27, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COMPLETE\4-26-0~1\20815.TXT NNIXON
13

olis area. We do similar work in Gary and in Colorado with an additional grant we received from the U.S. Department of Education. 

Last and most important to this afternoon’s discussion, we are an 

Indiana-approved supplemental education service provider and currently operate in Indianapolis and Gary. Our program takes students where they are and focuses on getting their reading and 

math skills up to where they need to be. We charge the districts 

$18 per hour per student. In Indianapolis, we can provide 80 hours 

of service to each eligible child. That is 2 hours a week for 40 

weeks, basically a school year. We believe that it is important to 

offer sustained tutoring services over a period of time if the students are to retain lessons learned. Our students have improved 

their reading and math skills by an average of 5 months academically after just 9 weeks, or 36 hours, in our program. One student 

recently told his grandmother that he, quote, didn’t feel stupid anymore after he completed our tutoring program. 

One key lesson that we have learned by providing SES is that 

needing a tutor isn’t enough to attract a student. Effective marketing counts. Even though there are more than—and I want to 

correct my written testimony, I wrote 6,000 students in IPS who 

need tutoring. That is 6,000 students who are eligible for the first 

part, the public school choice component of NCLB. They are in year 

one. It is 1,200 students who are eligible for tutoring in year two 

or more. It isn’t enough to say you are a State-qualified provider 

and that your service is free to the student and expect students to 

come. You must be aggressive in your marketing. You not only 

must attend the school night SES affairs, you must constantly follow up with students and their parents to find out why they didn’t 

show up at their scheduled time, and they need to constantly be 

aware that other providers are trying to attract their students to 

go with them. 

We have lost several students to other providers because other 

providers give incentives, such as gift certificates to their students. 

To date, we have not provided incentives other than the guarantee 

that you will learn and improve grades. However, in a recent conversation I had with IPS, Indianapolis Public School system, I believe we will begin to provide some incentive package to students 

for completing a percentage and/or all of the program hours we provide. IPS liked what we are doing, and they want students to use 

our program, but they are aware that other providers are using incentives to attract students. 

GEO is currently seeking a grant to support its tutoring program 

and recently received the attached letter, which I submitted in the 

testimony, from IPS recommending our tutoring program. Although 

GEO believes that learning and improved grades should be enough 

motivation, we have learned that perhaps small, reasonable incentives for improved academic achievement may keep students in the 

program for longer periods of time, leading to increased gains for 

both the student, school and district. The States may want to consider having a written policy, what type of timing of incentives may 

be used in a particular State so that providers in districts know the 

rules up front. 

At GEO, we primarily use a certified and licensed teacher to provide our services. We augment our certified teachers with qualified 

14

and trained college students, who assist the teachers in providing 

services, in working with the students. Our program focuses on improving reading and math skills. 

For background purposes, I thought it may be useful for Members of Congress to understand the process which we have to go 

through to get to the point of actually providing services to the students. First we must apply to the State to be a qualified provider. 

This application process took place in the spring, it does every 

year, and allows you to start providing services in the following 

fall. Once you are approved, you then need to work with the local 

districts to make sure they include you in their outreach efforts 

and sign a contract with the local district where the services are 

to be rendered. In Indianapolis, we had to sign a purchase order 

even though we had not yet started to provide services. The district 

needed to budget accordingly, so they said they needed a purchase 

order. We worked with them to get this done, and this process went 

rather smoothly. We then provided information to the district, and 

they mailed information packets to all SES providers, to all eligible 

students. They hosted parents nights at schools, and we attended 

each of these. 

To get paid for services rendered, the district requires four signatures, one by the principal, the teacher, the parent and the student, 

on a contract detailing the services to be provided. Then we must 

turn in time sheets signed by the students, teachers, principals and 

parents. These are good policies and should lead to effective rendering of services. I would encourage schools to use these same 

policies during the provision of their programs during the day. 

One concern I have about the SES program is that it doesn’t 

really matter how many hours of tutoring an SES program provides to students. The district simply states that each student is 

worth X amount of dollars. In Indianapolis, the district has set an 

available amount of funds for tutoring at the rate of about $1,400 

per student. The district does not set limits on the per-hour rate 

that can be charged. So one SES program may charge $100 an 

hour, while another, like us, may charge $18 an hour. In this example, the first SES provider will only provide 14 hours of service 

and receive $1,400 in return. The second provider will provide 80 

hours of service for the same amount of money. The first provider 

will get in and out quickly. The second will be in for quite a bit 

longer period of time. And while we believe being in for a long time 

has advantages, it also has its challenges, as students move to 

other providers, move out of the district or just drop out of the program altogether. 

The States may want to consider adding as part of its approval 

process a required range of hours to be provided. Having a range 

of hours ensures a minimum number of hours are provided to these 

students, while allowing for variation among providers and delivery 

methods. 

As for the issue of ‘‘needing improvement’’ districts providing 

SES programs, such districts face many challenges and constraints 

in bringing up their schools’ academic achievement. Last year I visited a group of principals in Gary, Indiana, with a team from the 

U.S. Department of Education, to review their implementation of 

SES programs and was struck by the fact that the principals were 

15

embracing the after-school program because it was so effective. But 

when asked if they had instituted the effective program in their 

daily and regular school program, they said no. When asked why 

not, they said, the district. The fact is SES is helping good programs get to students. That is the good news. The bad news is that 

the good programs are not being used during the day at school 

when it is most needed. 

If these needs improvement school districts want to make a 

change, it likely would be more effective to adopt some of the successful math and reading programs that are used in the SES programs during the school day rather than taking on the additional 

time and burden of operating their own SES program. In our experience in Indianapolis, our close partnership in collaboration with 

the district means that the district can focus on the core academics 

during the school day, and we can focus on the after-school instruction leading to a more effective use of both organizations’ resources, 

and hopefully in time improved academic achievement throughout 

the district. 

With that, Mr. Chairman, I am happy to respond to any questions that you or any member of the committee may have. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Teasley follows:]

Statement of Kevin Teasley, Founder and President, GEO Foundation, 

Indianapolis, IN 

Chairman Boehner, Ranking Member Miller, and Members of Congress, thank 

you for this opportunity to provide testimony to you regarding the important issue 

of supplemental education services. I am humbled by your invitation to speak today 

and hope that my comments provide you some valuable input to help form your future policy recommendations and laws. 

GEO Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Indianapolis, Indiana. It 

was founded in 1998. Today, GEO Foundation has four main programs. We have 

operated a charter school in Indianapolis for the past three years and we are scheduled to open three more charter schools this fall—one in Gary, an additional one 

in Indianapolis, and one in Colorado Springs. We also operate a Charter School 

Service Center to assist in the success of all charter schools in Indiana. 

In addition, we are a recipient of a U.S. Department of Education Parent Information and Resource Center grant that provides us the opportunity to engage and educate parents in the understanding of their rights and opportunities afforded them 

under NCLB. The PIRC grant work is centered on the Indianapolis area. We do 

similar work in Gary and Colorado with an additional grant we received from the 

U.S. Department of Education. 

Lastly, and most importantly to this afternoon’s discussion, we are an Indiana approved supplemental education service provider in the state of Indiana and currently operate in Indianapolis and Gary. 

Our program takes students where they are and focuses on getting their reading and math skills up to where they need to be. We charge $18 per hour. In Indianapolis, we can provide 80 hours of service to each eligible child—that is two hours per 

week for 40 weeks. We believe that it is important to offer sustained tutoring services over a period of time if students are to retain lessons learned. Our students 

have improved their reading and math skills by an average of five months academically after just nine weeks or 36 hours in our program. One student recently told 

his grandmother that he ‘‘didn’t feel stupid anymore’’ after he completed our tutoring program. 

One key lesson that we have learned by providing SES program is that needing 

a tutor isn’t enough to attract a student, effective marketing counts. Even though 

there are more than 6,000 students in IPS who need tutoring, it isn’t enough to simply say you are a state-qualified provider, that your service is free to the student, 

and expect students to come. You must be aggressive in your marketing. You not 

only must attend the school night SES fairs, you must constantly follow up with 

students and their parents to find out why they didn’t show up at their scheduled 

time, and you need to constantly be aware that other providers are trying to attract 

16

your students to go with them. We have lost several students to other providers because other providers give ‘‘incentives’’ such as gift certificates to their students. To 

date, we have not provided incentives other than the guarantee that you will learn 

and improve your grades. However, in a recent conversation I had with IPS, I believe we will begin to provide some incentive package to students for completing a 

percentage and/or all of the program hours we provide. IPS likes what we are doing 

and they want students to use our program but they are aware that other providers 

are using incentives to attract students. GEO is currently seeking a grant to support 

its tutoring program and recently received the attached letter of recommendation 

from IPS. 

Although GEO believes that learning and improved grades should be enough motivation, we have learned that perhaps small, reasonable incentives for sustained attendance or improved academic achievement may keep students in the program for 

longer periods of time leading to increased gains for both the student, school and 

district. The States may want to consider having in place a written policy of what 

type and timing of incentives may be used in a particular State so that providers 

and districts know the rules up front. 

At GEO we primarily use a certified and licensed teacher to provide our services. 

In addition we augment our certified teachers with qualified and trained college students who assist the teachers in providing services and working with students. Our 

program focuses on improving reading and math skills. 

For background purposes, it may be useful for members of Congress to understand the process which we have to go through to get to the point of providing services to students. First, we must apply to the state to be a qualified provider. This 

application process takes place in the spring of each year and allows you to start 

providing services in the following fall. Once you are approved, you then need to 

work with the local districts to make sure they include you in their outreach efforts 

and sign a contract with the local district for services to be rendered. In Indianapolis, we had to sign a purchase order even though we had not yet started to provide 

services. The district needed to budget accordingly so they said they needed a purchase order. We worked with them to get this done. This process went smoothly. 

We then provided information to the district and they mailed information packets 

with all SES provider information to all eligible students. They hosted parent nights 

at schools, too. We attended each of these. 

To get paid for services rendered, the district requires four signatures—one by the 

principal, the teacher, the parent and student—on a contract detailing the services 

to be provided. Then we must turn in time sheets signed by students, teachers, principals and parents. These are good policies and should lead to effective rendering 

of services. I would encourage schools to use these same policies during the provision of their programs during the school day. 

One concern I have about the SES program is that it doesn’t really matter how 

many hours of tutoring an SES program provides to students. The district simply 

states that each student is worth x amount of dollars. In Indianapolis, the district 

has set an available amount of funds for tutoring at the rate of about $1400 per 

student. The district does not set limits on the per hour rate that can be charged 

so one SES program may charge $100 per hour of tutoring while another may provide tutoring for $18 per hour like we do. In this example, the first SES provider 

will only provide 14 hours of service and receive $1400 in return. The second provider will provide 80 hours of service for the same amount of money. The first provider will get in and out quickly, the second will be in for quite a bit longer period 

of time. And, while we believe being in for a long time has advantages, it also has 

its challenges as students move to other providers, move out of the district, or just 

drop out of the program altogether. The States may want to consider adding as part 

of its approval process a required range of hours to be provided. Having a range 

of hours ensures a minimum number of hours are provided to these students, while 

allowing for variation among providers and delivery methods. 

As for the issue of ‘‘needing improvement’’ districts providing SES programs, such 

districts face many challenges and constraints in bringing up their schools academic 

achievement. For example, last year, I visited a group of principals in Gary with 

a team from the U.S. Department of Education to review their implementation of 

SES programs and was struck by the fact that the principals were embracing the 

after school tutoring program because it was so effective but when asked if they had 

instituted the ‘‘effective’’ program in their daily and regular school program they 

said no. When asked why not, they said, ‘‘the district.’’ The fact is SES is helping 

good programs get to students. That is the good news. The bad news is that the 

good programs are not being used during the day at school when it is most needed. 

If these ‘‘needs improvement school districts’’ want to make a change, it would 

likely be more effective to adopt some of the successful math and reading programs 

17

that are used in the SES programs during the school day rather than taking on the 

additional time and burden of operating their own SES program. In our experience 

in Indianapolis, our close partnership and collaboration with the district means that 

the district can focus on the core academics during the school day, and we can focus 

on the after school instruction leading to a more effective use of both organization’s 

resources and hopefully in time improved academic achievement throughout the district. 

With that Mr. Chairman, I am happy to respond to any questions you or other 

Members of the Committee may have. Thank you.

[An attachment to Mr. Teasley’s statement follows:]

April 10, 2005

To Whom It May Concern:

The GEO Foundation. has served the Indianapolis Public Schools as a reliable and 

conscientious provider of Supplemental Educational Services for our students. 

In my work with GEO Foundation representatives, I have found them to display 

the highest level of cooperation, integrity and professionalism. The GEO Foundation 

staff members have maintained a collaborative partnership with the Indianapolis 

Public Schools Supplemental Educational Services staff as well as with our parents 

and students. 

GEO Foundation provides an intense instructional program while focusing on tutoring that is centered on the student’s present academic level in language arts and 

mathematics. GEO Foundation provides a resource that is invaluable to our students and their families.

Sincerely,

Carrie Reinking 

Supplemental Educational Services Liaison 

Indianapolis Public Schools 

120 E. Walnut St. 

Indianapolis, IN 46204

Chairman BOEHNER. Mr. Cohen. 

STATEMENT OF JEFFREY COHEN, PRESIDENT, CATAPULT 

LEARNING, INC., BALTIMORE, MD 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Chairman Boehner and Ranking Member Miller and members of the committee, for inviting me here 

today. I am honored to be part of this important discussion about 

the supplemental education services provision of the No Child Left 

Behind Act. 

Catapult Learning is a subsidiary of Baltimore-based Educate, 

Inc., and a sister company to Sylvan Learning Center, the largest 

network of retail tutoring centers in the country. For more than 15 

years, Catapult has partnered with schools and school districts to 

provide high-quality, research-based supplemental instruction to 

at-risk students. As a true public-private partnership, we customize 

our broad suite of services from after-school instruction to special 

education to meet the needs of our school district partners. This 

school year we will provide services to more than 100,000 students 

in more than 150 school districts. 

The SES provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act were established with bipartisan support to offer additional assistance to students who attend a Title I school that has not made adequate yearly progress for 3 consecutive years. The intent of the provisions is 

to provide immediate interim educational help to low-income children who attend underachieving schools. 

SES is working for hundreds of thousands of students across the 

country. Students like Graciana Nascimento, a seventh-grader at 

18

Esek Hopkins School in Providence, Rhode Island. Graciana went 

from an F to a B-plus in reading on her report card last year after 

receiving free tutoring, tutoring her mother Delfina could not afford. Both Graciana and her mother credit the SES program as a 

catalyst for her improvement. 

We believe these programs have the potential to transform children’s lives, to put them back on track educationally, to get them 

excited about learning and to instill the confidence that anything 

is possible. 

While some view SES as an experiment in public education, it is 

important to be clear about the hypothesis we believe is being 

questioned. At question should not be the efficacy of research-based 

tutoring as an effective method for supplementing a student’s education. Indeed individualized and/or small-group instruction has 

been used effectively for decades to help students increase achievement. What is being tested is whether providing low-income families the opportunity to choose the tutoring program that best meets 

the needs of their children will help offset the impact of low-performing schools. 

According to the Department of Education, approximately 

218,000 students participated in SES programs during the 2003–

2004 school year, an increase of more than 100 percent over the 

prior year. Unfortunately, there are many districts where participation is virtually nonexistent, and student participation in SES nationwide is clearly muted by a variety of challenges facing States, 

districts and providers. For instance, districts grapple with issues 

such as determining student eligibility, administering parent communications, managing access to school sites and contracting with 

multiple providers. States cite as our biggest challenge determining 

whether the services of providers are effective in raising student 

achievement, and providers often contend with seemingly unnecessary obstacles, including direct opposition to SES, lack of information about implementation plans and LEA regulation of State-approved programs. 

Over the past 3 years, we have experienced many of these challenges firsthand. We have seen parent notification letters that are 

impossible to decipher. We have seen multipart registration processes that seem to delay registration rather than encouraging it, 

and we have been prohibited from talking to school districts and 

school principals and parents. While we are hopeful that these 

practices will diminish, there is no doubt that such practices have 

prevented thousands of low-income families from participating in 

the free after-school tutoring programs that they are entitled to by 

law. Alternatively, experience shows that when States, districts 

and providers collectively embrace SES, the result is thriving student participation, diversity of choice for parents and positive outcomes. 

The reluctance we are facing is easy to understand, but it is difficult to accept. SES is ground-breaking for public education because it established a competitive marketplace where competition, 

innovation, investment, successes and even failures are playing 

out. As a result, low-income parents are becoming educational consumers for the first time in their lives. These parents who do not 

have the means to move to suburban school districts or pay for priVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:57 Oct 27, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COMPLETE\4-26-0~1\20815.TXT NNIXON
19

vate school tuition now have the power to make a purchasing decision that will impact their children’s education. There is every reason to believe that these new education consumers will act as all 

consumers do, valuing quality, service and results above all else. 

As with all education reform, change takes time, and all involved 

must weather both successes and failures. The potential of SES 

programs is exciting, and the last thing we need is a rush to judgment based on anecdotes and scarce data. If SES programs prove 

unsuccessful, then they should be changed, but it is too early to 

make that determination. And if we modify this great public-private opportunity, let us do it for the right reason and not simply 

because it poses a threat to the status quo. 

It was 40 years ago this month that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was signed into law creating the Title I program. Since then, we have spent more than $175 billion in an effort to close the achievement gap. Regardless of one’s feeling about 

SES or No Child Left Behind, there is certainly consensus that the 

gap is still too large, high school dropout rates are too high, and 

we must accelerate our attempts to address these challenges. Last 

year it is estimated that a little more than 2 percent of Title I 

funds were spent to support SES programs, a relatively meager investment with the potential for a strong return. 

The most vexing problem surrounding SES implementation is 

the lack of consensus around the evaluation of program effectiveness. We, along with all State-approved providers, welcome full accountability for the results of SES programs. We believe there are 

several accountabilities inherent in the process of implementing 

these programs. For example, we are accountable to the school districts with whom we contract to provide services. We are similarly 

accountable to the principals who oversee the delivery of our programs in their buildings. Ultimately we are accountable to the parents who select our programs for their children. 

Still we realize that these built-in accountabilities are not 

enough. Under No Child Left Behind, the State has the responsibility to approve providers and evaluate their effectiveness. We believe States should use a variety of methods for determining effectiveness, including standardized test results, survey data, and compliance with provider applications. 

While the debate continues with respect to using standardized 

test data as an evaluation tool, we believe States can use claims 

made in provider applications as a way of validating that the provider’s programs are effective. To accomplish this goal, we have 

recommended the establishment of a third-party validation system 

that can be used to determine whether providers have met the objectives set forth in their State applications. Such a neutral system 

will enable States to determine whether to renew a provider’s application. 

The research is clear: High-quality, research-based tutoring programs can move the needle dramatically on student achievement. 

Ill-conceived, poorly executed programs do not. We need to arm our 

States and districts with the tools to tell the difference between the 

two so we can end the debate about effectiveness and focus collectively on raising student achievement. 

Once again, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. 

20

Chairman BOEHNER. Thank you, Mr. Cohen. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cohen follows:]

Statement of Jeffrey Cohen, President, Catapult Learning, Inc., Baltimore, 

MD 

Thank you Chairman Boehner and Ranking Member Miller for inviting me here 

today. I am honored to be part of this important discussion about the Supplemental 

Educational Services (SES) provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act. My name 

is Jeffrey Cohen and I am the President of Catapult Learning. Catapult Learning 

is a subsidiary of Baltimore-based Educate, Inc., and a sister company to Sylvan 

Learning Center, the largest network of retail tutoring centers in the country. 

For more than 15 years, Catapult Learning has partnered with schools and school 

districts to provide high quality, research-based supplemental education services to 

at-risk, and largely minority, students. Our business is a true public/private partnership with a primary purpose of raising academic achievement for at-risk students. We customize our broad suite of services, from after-school instruction to special education to school-based pediatric therapy, to meet the needs of our school district partners. This school year we will provide services to more than 100,000 students in more than 150 school districts. 

Given Catapult Learning’s history of serving at-risk students, we were among the 

first providers to seek state approval as an SES provider under NCLB, and we have 

served thousands of children over the last three years. Along the way, we have been 

part of the national dialogue, with parents, students, school administrators and academic leaders on how SES works, its effectiveness, and its long-term prospects. We 

believe these programs have the potential to transform children’s lives, to put them 

back on track educationally, to get them excited about learning, and to instill the 

confidence that anything is possible. 

SES is working for students across the country. Students like Graciana 

Nascimento, a 7th grader at Esek Hopkins School in Providence, RI. Graciana went 

from an F to a B+ in reading on her school report card last year after receiving free 

SES tutoring, tutoring her mother Delfina could not afford to pay for directly. 

Graciana also moved her grades up from D’s to B’s in her other core academic subjects, and posted an 8 point jump on her state standardized test score. Both 

Graciana and her mother credit the SES program as the catalyst for her improvement. Graciana is just one of hundreds of thousands of Title I students nationwide 

whose lives have been given a new, more promising start by this historic effort to 

level the educational playing field for low-income students. 

SES provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act were established, with bi-partisan 

support, to offer extra academic assistance to students like Graciana who attend a 

Title I school that has not made adequate yearly progress (AYP) for three consecutive years. The intent of the provisions is to provide immediate interim educational 

help to low-income children who attend underachieving schools, while the schools 

work with their LEA and SEA to make whatever changes are necessary to increase 

student achievement levels. 

While some view SES as an experiment in public education, it is important to be 

clear about the hypothesis being tested. At question should not be the efficacy of 

research-based tutoring as an effective method for supplementing students’ education. Indeed, individualized and/or small group instruction has been used effectively for decades to help students increase achievement. What is being tested is 

whether providing low-income families with the opportunity to choose the tutoring 

program that best meets the needs of their children will help offset the impact of 

low performing schools. 

As a provider delivering SES since its inception in the 2002–03 school year, I can 

tell you that the program, while still in its infancy, is showing progress and promise. Although participation in many districts is still virtually non-existent, according 

to the United States Department of Education, approximately 218,000 students enrolled in NCLB SES programs in the 2003–04 school year, an increase of more than 

100 percent over 2002–2003. And for the current school year, all indicators suggest 

that the number of students enrolled should show similar growth. 

This growth in student participation is evidence that parents and students not 

only find the free tutoring option compelling enough to try once, but also derive 

enough value from their participation to re-enroll in subsequent years, tell their 

friends and families, and make SES a part of their public school experience. Week 

in and week out, we receive phone calls from parents, grandparents, community organizations, schools, and even school districts from around the country about the 

positive impact of our SES program. Despite the daily flood of negative press about 

NCLB, its purpose and its implementation, the calls continue and the enrollments 

21

climb. My belief is that this demand we are seeing for services at the local level 

transcends the politics of NCLB and serves as evidence that SES programs are an 

appropriate and compelling option for low-income families; one that will provide for 

low- income families the same educational benefits that similar programs have provided for middle and upper income families for decades. 

While there are positive stories and trends to cite, student adoption of SES is 

clearly muted by a wide variety of challenges that states, districts, schools, and providers face. For instance, districts grapple with issues such as determining student 

eligibility and administering parent communications, managing access to school 

sites, and contracting with providers. States cite as their biggest challenge determining whether the services of potential providers are effective in raising student 

achievement. Providers often contend with unnecessary obstacles including district 

opposition to participation in SES, lack of information about implementation plans, 

and LEA regulation of state-approved educational programs. 

Over the past three years, we have experienced dozens of examples of what appear to be obstructionist action on the part of those charged with implementing SES 

programs at the local level. We have seen parent notification letters that are impossible to decipher. We have seen multi-part registration processes that seem to challenge or dare parents to register, rather than encourage them. We have been prohibited from talking to school principals and parents. While we are hopeful that these 

practices will diminish, there is no doubt that such practices have prevented thousands of low-income families from participating in the free after-school tutoring programs that they are entitled to by law. Alternatively, experience is showing that 

when states, districts, and providers collectively embrace SES, the result is thriving 

student participation, diversity of choice for parents, and positive outcomes. 

The reluctance we are facing is easy to understand, but difficult to accept. SES 

is groundbreaking for public education because it has established a competitive marketplace where competition, innovation, investment, successes, and even failures are 

playing out. And, as in any industry, quality is prevailing. Across the country, providers are developing reputations among parents and school districts, and these reputations are becoming determinants of their success or failure. Most importantly, 

low-income parents are becoming educational consumers for the first time in their 

lives. These parents, who do not have the means to move to suburban school districts or pay for private school tuition, now have the power to make a purchasing 

decision that will meaningfully impact their children’s education. There is every reason to believe that these new education consumers will act as all consumers do, valuing quality, service and results above all else. 

As with all education reform, change takes time and all involved must weather 

both successes and failures. The potential of SES programs is exciting, and the last 

thing we need is a rush to judgment based on anecdotes, scarce data, and the fear 

of success. If SES programs prove unsuccessful, then they should be changed, but 

it is too early to make that determination. And, if we modify this great public/private opportunity, let’s do it for the right reason, and not simply because it poses 

a threat to the status quo. It was 40 years ago this month that the Elementary and 

Secondary Education Act was signed into law, creating the Title I program. Since 

then, we have spent more than $175 billion in an effort to close the achievement 

gap. Regardless of one’s feelings regarding SES or NCLB, there is certainly consensus that the gap is still too large, high school dropout rates are too high, and 

we must accelerate our attempts to address these challenges. Last year it is estimated that a little more than 2% of Title I funds were spent to support SES programs, a relatively meager investment with the potential of a very strong return. 

The most vexing problem surrounding SES implementation is the lack of consensus around the evaluation of program effectiveness. We, along with all state-approved providers, welcome full accountability for the results of SES programs. We 

believe there are several accountabilities inherent in the process of implementing 

SES programs. For example, we are accountable to the school districts with whom 

we contract to provide services. We are similarly accountable to the principals who 

oversee the delivery of our programs in their buildings. Ultimately, we are accountable to the parents who select our programs for their children. 

Still, we realize that these ‘‘built-in’’ accountabilities are not enough. Under 

NCLB, the state has the responsibility to approve providers and evaluate their effectiveness. We believe states should use a variety of methods for determining effectiveness, including standardized test results, survey data and compliance with provider applications. While the debate continues with respect to using standardized 

test data as an evaluation tool, we believe states can use claims made in provider 

applications as a way of validating that the provider is indeed complying with such 

claims. To accomplish this goal, we have recommended the establishment of a thirdparty accreditation system that can be used to determine whether providers have 

22

met the objectives set forth in their state applications. Such a neutral system can 

assist states in determining whether to renew a provider’s application. Moreover, it 

will ensure that providers deliver on their promises of service delivery, of customer 

satisfaction, and of student achievement. 

The research is clear: high quality, research-based tutoring programs move the 

needle dramatically on student achievement. Ill-conceived, poorly executed programs 

do not. We need to arm our states and districts with the tools to tell the difference 

between the two so we can end the debate about effectiveness and focus collectively 

on raising student achievement. 

Once again Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I appreciate your time and would be happy to answer any questions at this time. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Ms. Swanson. 

STATEMENT OF ELIZABETH SWANSON, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF 

AFTER SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY PROGRAMS, CHICAGO, IL 

Ms. SWANSON. My name is Elizabeth Swanson, and I am the director of after-school and community school programs for the Chicago Public Schools. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you 

today. And I want to thank the committee for recognizing the importance of this issue as well as your work to ensure that all students receive the high-quality supplemental education services that 

they deserve. 

I want to thank in particular Representatives Danny Davis and 

Judy Biggert for their close attention to this issue and continual 

support for Chicago Public Schools. 

My comments today will focus on the need for accountability in 

the delivery as well as the results of supplemental services. Since 

Mayor Daley took responsibility of the Chicago Public School system in 1995, the district has been holding schools accountable for 

improving student performance. CPS has closed underperforming 

schools, dismissed underperforming principals to send a clear message that schools must continue its progress. 

Now after 10 years of strong leadership and accountability, we 

are seeing the results. CPS students are at all-time highs in State 

assessments, and our improvement has outpaced the State’s. 

Expanding student learning opportunities, including the creation 

of new schools, and the expansion of after-school programs is one 

of the district’s three core strategies to becoming the premiere 

urban school district in this Nation. Given CPS’s commitment to 

choice, innovation and quality after-school programs, SES was seen 

as an opportunity to support and enhance the district’s visions for 

its students and families. 

This school year, CPS attempted to apply its accountability system to the private supplemental services program; however, we 

have now been advised by the U.S. Department of Education that 

it is not the district’s role to hold these tutoring firms accountable. 

In the current regulatory environment around supplemental services, Chicago Public Schools is expected to allow outside providers 

into its schools and pay them at rates they unilaterally establish. 

In addition, we must cede evaluation responsibilities to the State. 

Put plainly, we are being required to contract without being able 

to negotiate terms, and that is poor government and business practice. 

In Chicago, this unregulated environment has resulted in SES 

providers charging three to four times the amount of money as it 

23

takes to offer equivalent CPS after-school programs, and they use 

the same or similar materials, the same teachers and same facilities as CPS. In Chicago, SES is a substantial industry. We are 

going to spend about $50 million on SES this year, and we expect 

to next year. We must ensure that this funding will provide highquality services for as many students as possible, and we need the 

proper infrastructure from the State and Federal Government to 

make that happen. 

Under the U.S. Department of Education’s current administrative guidelines, States approve SES providers and are responsible 

for monitoring their performance. School districts are expected to 

facilitate parental selection of a provider and pay for the services. 

In Illinois, the new administration at the Illinois State Board of 

Education has inherited a system where SES providers were granted permission to tutor tens of thousands of students based on a 

cursory review of only a handful of pages of documentation. 

CPS has been working closely with the Governor of Illinois and 

his new administration at the Illinois State Board on these SES 

issues. The State recognizes the shortcomings of the current SES 

approval and monitoring system, and they are working to improve 

their oversight. 

Chicago Public Schools, on the other hand, has the capacity, the 

commitment and the obligation to ensure that the services provided 

to our students are of the highest quality. This school year we implemented an accountability system that begins at the school level. 

CPS employs an SES lead instructor at each SES-eligible school 

who monitors program implementation and quality. With our current accountability system, we have been able to adequately monitor SES providers as demonstrated by our recent removal of one 

provider from seven of our schools. We took this action after a thorough review of the charges compiled by schools and parents, including inadequate student materials, exceeding the agreed-upon student/teacher ratios, chronic tutor absences and an insufficient number of substitute tutors. 

In addition, CPS is currently conducting an evaluation of SES. 

That means all of the components recommended by the Department of Education, and it should be completed by midsummer. 

However, according to the U.S. Department of Education, CPA will 

be unable to use that data to hold providers accountable or to act 

on any of the results. So I am here today to ask for your help. 

We estimate that approximately 400 schools in Chicago, over 

230,000 students, will be eligible for SES next year. We also have 

been told that we will have upwards of 70 SES providers that will 

be approved to service in our district. Again, SES is a substantial 

industry in Chicago, and there must be a comparable accountability system. 

I respectfully ask you to consider the following: No. 1, allow local 

education agencies to contract with SES providers as they do with 

other vendors. CPS carefully negotiates contracts in order to attain 

the highest-quality product or service and the highest possible return on the investment. We do this with our unions, our building 

contractors, our office supply companies, and SES should be no exception. CPS was able to enroll over 80,000 students this school 

year, more than any other district in the Nation. However, the inVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:57 Oct 27, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COMPLETE\4-26-0~1\20815.TXT NNIXON
24

ability to negotiate contracts can lead to only 25,000 receiving supplemental services next year. With over 200,000 eligible students, 

it seems a travesty to only serve 25,000. 

And No. 2, allow LEAs to evaluate SES providers and act upon 

the results. If a provider does not demonstrate positive impact, 

LEAs should not be obligated to offer that vendor’s services to Chicago parents. Allow us to provide parents a universe of proven 

high-quality options. 

Chicago Public Schools’ commitment to high-quality education, 

and specifically after-school activities, is clear. The district has 

worked hard to craft and attain a broad vision for after-school and 

community school programs, and supplemental education services 

can help us achieve that vision, but only if SES is done correctly 

with the proper supports and accountability measures. Please help 

us; help our schools and students ensure that high-quality services 

indeed happen. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Swanson follows:]

Statement of Elizabeth Swanson, Director, Office of After School and 

Community Programs, Chicago, IL 

My name is Elizabeth Swanson and I am the Director of After School and Community School Programs for the Chicago Public Schools. I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about the supplemental services provision in No Child 

Left Behind. I also want to thank you for recognizing the importance of this issue—

and for your work to ensure that all students receive the high-quality supplemental 

educational services that they deserve. 

My comments today will focus on the need for accountability in the delivery, as 

well as the results, of supplemental services. I will discuss in detail Chicago Public 

Schools’ efforts to ensure accountability for the public dollars spent on tutoring. I 

will also demonstrate that our belief in accountability goes far beyond the realm of 

supplemental services—but extends to all that we do as a district, including our programs offered in out-of-school time. As you will see, we only wish to hold supplemental service providers to the same accountability measures to which we hold ourselves. 

CPS Alignment with NCLB 

Chicago Public Schools believes in the spirit of the No Child Left Behind Act’s 

three principles: 

1. Accountability for results 

2. Quality options for all students 

3. Highly qualified teachers for every child 

All three principles are consistent with our own key strategies and desired system 

outcomes—however, this testimony will specifically focus on the first two. 

Accountability for results 

Since Mayor Daley took responsibility for the Chicago Public School system in 

1995, the district has been holding schools accountable for improving student performance. CPS has closed under-performing schools, dismissed under-performing 

principals and has aggressively used the powers of probation to send a clear message that schools must make continuous progress. 

Now, after 10 years of strong leadership and accountability, we are seeing the results. CPS students are at all-time highs on state assessments in most subjects and 

grades and our improvement has outpaced the state’s. In addition, CPS is responsible for the reduction in the achievement gap in Illinois. Our local assessments tell 

the same story. For the first time ever, better than half of our eighth grade students 

are above the national average in math. And 74% of our schools demonstrated gains 

in the 2003–04 school year. 

Although we still have a long way to go, these results are witness to steady gains 

that come largely from strong accountability systems linked to standards-based instruction. Our success is truly remarkable for a school system where over 85% of 

the students are low income. In a country where performance has consistently been 

correlated to family income, this is proof positive that poor and minority children 

can meet high standards. 

25

87Quality options for all students 

Expanding student learning opportunities, including the creation of new schools 

and the expansion of after-school programs, is one of the District’s three core strategies for becoming the premier urban school district in the nation. As a part of this 

strategy, CPS strongly embraces free market innovations and competition. Under 

the Mayor’s leadership, the school system is committed to opening 100 new schools 

within the next 5 years that will embody creativity and efficiency. These schools will 

include charter schools, contract schools, small schools and performance schools. 

CPS also places a high priority on providing quality after-school programs, particularly for underachieving students attending low-performing schools. Chicago 

Public Schools established the Office of After School and Community School Programs (2001), which provides the overall leadership and guidance to ensure that 

every CPS student has access to quality programs beyond the regular school day. 

The mission of our Office is to enable and support schools in offering a variety of 

high-quality programs that support academic instruction and enrich the development of the whole child. CPS believes that after-school activities have the potential 

to act as buffers against negative student outcomes, including underachievement. 

For children who face academic or behavior-related obstacles to success during the 

regular school day, the after-school hours can be a time to eliminate barriers and 

improve the education of the ‘‘whole child.’’

Our office currently operates seven major after school initiatives (including SES), 

serving approximately 200,000 students (about 46% of the student population) in 

548 elementary and high schools. This is well beyond what comparable large urban 

areas are providing during the out-of-school hours. 

As a part of this commitment to quality programs, CPS provides schools with ongoing assistance to create and sustain high-quality programming for their students. 

CPS has also leveraged a number of new after-school resources for the schools, 

which have dramatically increased the programs and services offered to students 

and their families. And again, we are seeing the results of our hard work. In 2003–

04, 70% of community schools (schools that offer extensive after-school programming) demonstrated gains on the reading portion of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. 

In addition, 76% of our 21st Century Community Learning Centers demonstrated 

gains on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. While test scores alone do not 

prove success for our after-school initiatives, they do signify that our students are 

benefiting from these programs and academic achievement is on the rise. 

Supplemental Educational Services (SES) 

Given CPS’ commitment to choice, innovation and quality after-school programs, 

SES was seen as an opportunity to support and enhance the District’s vision for its 

students and families. During the 2004–05 school year, CPS attempted to apply its 

accountability system to the private supplemental services program. However, we 

have now been advised by the US Department of Education that it is not our role 

to hold these tutoring firms accountable. 

In the current regulatory environment around supplemental services, Chicago 

Public Schools is expected to allow outside providers into its schools, let them use 

a pre-approved curriculum, and pay them at rates they unilaterally establish without having any input into the program design and cost effectiveness. In addition, 

we must cede evaluation responsibilities to the state. Put plainly, we are being required to contract without being able to negotiate terms—and this is simply poor 

government, and business, practice. 

In Chicago, this unregulated environment has resulted in SES providers charging 

three to four times the amount of money as it takes to offer equivalent CPS afterschool programs—and they use the same materials, same teachers, and same facilities as CPS. In Chicago, the supplemental educational services market is a substantial industry. CPS will devote close to $50 million to supplemental services this 

school year—as well as next year. We must ensure that this funding will provide 

high-quality services for as many students as possible—and we need the proper infrastructure and support from the state and federal government to make that happen. 

Under the US Department of Education’s current administrative guidelines, 

states approve SES providers and are responsible for monitoring their performance. 

School districts are expected to facilitate parental involvement in selecting a provider and pay for the services out of their Title I set-aside. In Illinois, the new administration at the Illinois State Board of Education, has inherited a system where 

SES providers were granted permission to tutor tens of thousands of students based 

on a cursory review of only a handful of pages of documentation. As CPS is also 

a provider of other after-school services, we know that the state and federal government typically require a rigorous and extensive approval process for state or federal 

26

funding, as with the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program. However, 

such a process does not currently exist for SES. The inadequate SES approval process is further outlined in the written materials presented today, which include samples of the proposals that were approved, as well as a detailed analysis (completed 

by the CPS research department) of the ‘‘evidence’’ that was provided to validate 

their applications. The ‘‘evaluation’’ process used by the state to determine whether 

or not providers are effective is also included in those materials. 

CPS has been working closely with Governor Blagojevich and his new administration at the Illinois State Board of Education on these SES issues. The state recognizes the shortcomings of the current SES approval and monitoring system and they 

are working to improve their oversight. However, there are many different demands 

being placed on state departments of education and Illinois, like many, is struggling 

to keep up with those demands. 

Chicago Pubic Schools, on the other hand, has the capacity, the commitment and 

the obligation to ensure that the services provided to our students are of the highest 

quality. This school year we implemented an accountability system that begins at 

the school level. CPS employs a SES ‘‘Lead Instructor’’ at each SES eligible school. 

This individual is responsible for visiting SES classrooms, monitoring the implementation of curriculum, verifying compliance with the contract (e.g., adequate materials, student/teacher ratio, availability of tutors) and verifying student attendance. 

In addition, schools, parents and District administration receive individual tutoring 

plans and student progress reports throughout the program. District officials also 

perform site-visits throughout the year to monitor the overall implementation of the 

program. With our current accountability system, we feel that we have been able 

to adequately monitor SES providers—as demonstrated by our recent removal of one 

provider from seven of our schools. We took this action after a thorough review of 

the charges compiled by schools and parents, including inadequate student materials, exceeding the agreed upon student/teacher ratios, continual tutor absences 

and an insufficient number of substitute tutors. After extensive discussions with the 

provider in question and their documented failure to correct the chronic problems 

that were identified, they were removed as a SES provider in seven of our schools. 

The recent flurry of news reports about SES accountability (or lack thereof) brings 

us here today. However, CPS has been thinking about evaluation of these tutoring 

programs from day one. The Department of Education recently commissioned a report to advise states on how to evaluate supplemental services. CPS is currently 

conducting an evaluation of SES that meets all of the components recommended by 

the Department of Education: evaluation of student performance controlling for several variables, attendance, and parent and student satisfaction with their selected 

services. Our evaluation will be completed by mid-summer. However, according to 

the US Department of Education, CPS will be unable to use that data to hold providers accountable or to act on any of the results. 

Recommendations 

I am here to ask for your help. The Chicago Public Schools is the third largest 

school district in the country, serving over 430,000 students in 602 schools. We estimate that approximately 400 schools—230,000 students—will be eligible for supplemental services next year. We have also been told that upwards of 70 SES providers 

will be approved to serve in our District. Again, SES is a substantial industry in 

Chicago and there must be a comparable accountability system. 

I respectfully ask you to consider the following: 

1. Allow Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to contract with SES providers as they 

do with other vendors. CPS carefully bids contracts in order to attain the highest quality product or service and the highest possible return on the investment. We do this with our bargaining units, our building contractors, our office 

supplies companies—and we evaluate the results of our investments to determine whether they are worth continuing. SES should be no exception. 

CPS was able to enroll over 80,000 students this school year—more than any 

other district in the nation. However, we were able to do that as half of those 

students were registered with the District’s program, which costs 3–4 times 

less than the private programs. CPS is no longer able to be a SES provider. 

That fact, combined with the inability to negotiate contracts, could lead to only 

25,000 students receiving supplemental services next year. With over 200,000 

eligible students, it seems a travesty to only serve 25,000. By allowing LEAs 

to negotiate contracts, you will ensure that high-quality services are offered 

to as many students as possible. 

2. Allow LEAs to evaluate SES providers and act upon the results. If a provider 

does not demonstrate positive impact, scores low on parent and student satisfaction surveys, experienced chronic implementation problems (e.g., lack of maVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:57 Oct 27, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\COMPLETE\4-26-0~1\20815.TXT NNIXON
27

terials, tutors, etc), LEAs should not be obligated to offer that vendor’s services 

to Chicago parents. Currently we must continue to offer all services—regardless of performance—until the state removes a provider from the approved list. 

Allow us to provide parents a universe of proven, high quality choices. 

Chicago Public Schools’ commitment to high-quality education, and specifically 

after-school activities, is clear. The District has worked hard to craft and attain a 

broad vision for after-school and community school programs, which includes providing comprehensive programs for students in out-of-school time, and incorporates 

needed programs and services for parents and community members. Supplemental 

Educational Services can help us achieve this vision—but only if SES is done correctly—with the proper supports and accountability measures. Please help us—help 

our schools and students—ensure that high-quality services indeed happen. 

Thank you. 

Chairman BOEHNER. I thank all of the witnesses for your testimony as we deal with the issue of supplemental services and how 

we can get them to more students, and how we can ensure that 

they are more effective. We do appreciate your testimony, because 

we need to know what is going on in the field. 

Now, Ms. Swanson, if I understood the basic thrust of your testimony, it is trust us. And I guess I have to say, given all the money 

that we have shipped to public schools around the country, it is 

hard for me to sit here, looking at what is going on in the Chicago 

Public Schools for the last 30, 40 years, and want to say I am willing to trust you. It is very difficult for me to do, even though I 

would agree that what has happened over the last 10 years in Chicago, you have made remarkable progress. But if I did say, all 

right, Ms. Swanson, we will trust the Chicago Public Schools to do 

a fair job in terms of opening this up, would you then follow the 

law and not be a supplemental provider yourself? 

Ms. SWANSON. We are following the law. We are no longer a supplemental service provider, and we would continue not to be a supplemental service provider. 

I have to say, the last 10 years we have shown dramatic results. 

Seventy-four percent of our schools made gains last year. We have 

a low-income population of 85 percent, so it is remarkable that we 

are seeing such gains concerning the population we are trying to 

serve. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Given that Chicago is a large part of the 

State of Illinois, I have a hard time understanding why the State 

board of education in Illinois can’t work closely with you in order 

to achieve the results that you are attempting to achieve. Where 

is the breakdown here? 

Ms. SWANSON. The State itself admittedly does not have the capacity to monitor those. You know, hearing Louisiana’s testimony, 

it is phenomenal what Louisiana is doing. The State doesn’t do any 

of that for us in Illinois. Currently CPA has an attendance tracking 

system that we are trying to get the same exact results that you 

are after. What is missing is the invoicing component. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Maybe I could cut a deal right here. Would 

the State of Louisiana be willing to sell to the State of Illinois or 

license your system to the State of Illinois? 

Ms. SWANSON. Or just share. 

Chairman BOEHNER. They did a good job. 

Ms. SWANSON. I am not going to let you cut my deal. 

28

Chairman BOEHNER. Mr. Cohen, what do you think about the 

suggestions that Ms. Swanson—or the suggestion she is making for 

changes in allowing the LEAs to have greater control over what 

happens? 

Mr. COHEN. Well, I think, as I tried to point out in my testimony, 

that one of the major barriers in implementing SES programs has 

been the complexities, the uncertainties, the unknown. I think adding—this would add another layer of complexity. Right now you 

have essentially 50 authorities that are supposed to manage the 

implementation of those programs, and if done right, it is a fairly 

efficient system. As I understand Ms. Swanson’s idea, you now 

would be saying you have thousands of LEAs. 

Chairman BOEHNER. All with their rules and regs. 

Mr. COHEN. One of the problems that we face is we tried to make 

sure as many of the per pupil funding dollars goes into instruction. 

That type of rule, I believe, would radically increase noninstructional costs because we would find ourselves negotiating over and 

over and over again with multiple LEAs. I suspect it would drive 

providers out of the market. 

Chairman BOEHNER. I think all of you talked about the difficulty 

in getting eligible children and their families to sign up for supplemental services; and then even though you sign them up, trying to 

get them there to the classroom. What are the major barriers that 

you have experienced in terms of getting eligible students to sign 

up for these services? And we will start with Ms. Nola-Ganey. 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. I think it is awareness on the part of the parents and the families of the availability of the services. I think that 

is a major obstacle. We have tried hard to do community awareness, but I don’t think you can ever do too much. I think that is 

the main obstacle is awareness. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Mr. Teasley. 

Mr. TEASLEY. Probably several obstacles. No. 1 would be awareness. I am not a media expert, but they do say you need to have 

1,200 gross rating points in order to get into the market whatever 

package you are trying to sell. In Indianapolis, Gary and Colorado, 

No Child Left Behind requires the district to provide one notice a 

year. One notice isn’t going to be good enough. Service providers 

don’t have the list of the students. Service providers would probably like to market their program directly to the students, and I 

understand we need privacy, and we have privacy issues. 

Perhaps one way we could work with the district since they do 

know who needs the services is to provide the district as much information and the funding necessary to mail or phone call necessary to reach these families, because these families, they may get 

something in the mail and looks like direct mail, and they pass it 

on or don’t even read it. And highly educated families who have 

three or four kids, stuff gets stuck on the to-do list or on the pile 

of mail you need to look at. So even low-income families are having 

the same challenges as high-income families are with managing 

the mail that they have. They don’t know if it is important. So direct access to the families would probably be the best solution, 

keeping in mind the right to privacy that each family has. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Mr. Cohen. 

29

Mr. COHEN. I echo both those thoughts and would add that I 

think there is an issue of effort. And again, as I tried to point out 

in my testimony, we have seen school districts that will provide a 

provider fair during the middle of the workday miles and miles 

from mass transit, and then not to steal Ms. Swanson’s thunder, 

but Chicago on this issue provided multiple provider fairs after 

work, well communicated to the community, and provided transportation, and they were a resounding success, and they have 80,000 

students in their program. Certainly it is parent awareness, but 

how much effort is going in to make sure these parents are aware 

that these programs are out there. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Ms. Swanson. 

Ms. SWANSON. I believe the district does have to become a huge 

advocate for this program, and Chicago Public Schools has absolutely embraced SES. And we did announcements over the summer. We vetted all the things we sent out to parents with community groups and groups of parents. There is a 20 percent return 

rate when we throw something in the mail. We did direct outreach 

through churches, the neighborhoods. We held regional fairs. We 

provided transportation. The district can be a huge catalyst for getting people registered for this program, and we will continue this 

next year as well. 

Chairman BOEHNER. I know my time has expired, but I need to 

expound on this point, because school districts are in an interesting 

position. If they reach out and encourage more participation, that 

is more money that comes out of the Title I coffers and goes into 

the SES providers’ pockets. And Chicago has taken what I would 

think the morally right approach to say these kids need help, let 

us reach out and let us get as many enrolled as we can. We have 

put school districts in kind of an interesting box. 

Ms. Swanson, I think you know what goes on in Chicago and 

elsewhere. Why aren’t more schools embracing supplemental services for their students, in your opinion? Then I will ask Mr. Cohen. 

Ms. SWANSON. I don’t know. I think it does put—like you said, 

it is an interesting line we are walking. We know we are critical 

to assessing the program. We have a CEO who embraces afterschool tutoring. It is a personal passion of his. He developed this 

office when he came in in the administration a few years ago. An 

after-school office didn’t exist. It is part of CPS’s mission. But it 

does go back to the critical component of this, but also not able to 

really necessarily regulate what happens once we get folks enrolled 

and things of that sort. Districts are trying to walk the fine line, 

but a lot of it is financial. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Thank you. 

Mr. Miller. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you all for 

your testimony. I think it has all been very constructive and very 

insightful. 

A couple of things in the questions. If I understand, the situation 

in Illinois is that the State really has sort of a bare-bones program 

in terms of quality and monitoring and control and accountability, 

if you will, operation. And I think the concern, Mr. Chairman, is, 

for us, somebody has to take responsibility for having a well-administered program. If we put $200 million into this program this 

30

year, people are projecting it could go rather quickly to $2 billion. 

We can’t leave that money on a stump. We have to know that 

somebody is watching out after that. 

Louisiana has given us one version of that. Mr. Teasley has given 

us another version that he thinks works in Indiana. And in Illinois, 

we have this big void where the State is not participating, which 

means then the school district has to open up to its parents and 

to its resources, a lot of people that may or may not be fly by-night 

operators, because you really don’t know what the monitoring is. 

Mr. MILLER. Because you really do not know what the monitoring is. You do not know how they are doing. You do not have 

real-time data in terms of their effectiveness. 

Now, I would say, well, you have got some big-name operators. 

They have a franchise they want to protect, so maybe they are 

going to do a good job, or you hope they will do a good job. But that 

doesn’t even help you here, because at some point the parent gets 

to make a decision about who they are going to request provide 

these services. 

And if somebody—if the State is not going to put in place a firstclass system—not a burdensome system but a first-class system 

that gives us the kind of data and information so that we can start 

to deal with this in a modern fashion, I mean, we are constructing 

a new system here. We should not construct it like the system of 

the last 50 years. We should construct it with all of the benefits 

of data and real-time information so it can be used and it can hold 

people accountable and we can get the results for these students. 

But when the State defaults, and I think I can probably throw 

California partially in that category, then who watches out for the 

interests of the taxpayer dollars, for the child, for the parent, and 

for the school district? Somebody has got to step in those shoes. 

And I think either we are going to have to determine what a good 

system looks like to help some of these States get up and running 

and meet their responsibility or we are—well, I do not know what 

the ‘‘or’’ is, because, again, somebody has got to be accountable for 

this money. 

I think Chicago has been caught in an unusual situation, and it 

is not about—at least when I listen to parents, parents made it 

pretty clear in Chicago, in many instances, they wanted to have the 

choice of the current teachers and/or a vendor, if you will, an outside person, made that very clear from people that I talked to. 

And I just think it goes to the fundamentals of this hearing. I 

mean, we took a major and bold step forward in terms of inviting 

in the non-profit private sector to this system because we thought 

this would be healthy and we thought that services and research 

that have to be done could be effectively deployed on behalf of these 

children. And I hope that turns out to be true, but we are not there 

yet. 

Mr. Teasley, on page 2 of your statement—excuse me, Mr. 

Cohen, on page 2 of your statement, you say that while some see 

SES as an experiment in public education, it is important here to 

clear up about what the hypothesis are being tested. At question 

should not be the efficacy of researched-based tutoring as an effective method supplementing students’ education. Indeed, individualized or small-group instruction has been used effectively for decVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:57 Oct 27, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COMPLETE\4-26-0~1\20815.TXT NNIXON
31

ades to help students increase achievement. What is being tested 

here is whether or not providing low-income families with the opportunity to choose the tutoring program that best meets the needs 

of their children. 

I suspect both are being tested here. Because the problem is the 

parent has got to rely on the fact that this is a research-based tutoring that is an effective method of delivering these services. We 

haven’t quite crossed that threshold where we can look parents in 

the eye in Washington, Indiana, Louisiana and elsewhere and say, 

here is your 10 choices, different ways of doing this, but the effectiveness is pretty close, and we have confidence in them, make your 

choices where you would like to go. 

Because, right now, at least, just—in coming from within the industry suggests—I love it when the others say, oh, that other guy 

is cheating over there; that person is cheating, too. Suggests that 

we are not there where we can assure these parents that each of 

these choices is tied to—and in fact Chicago has dismissed and 

other people have dismissed some providers. 

Mr. COHEN. I think the system, though, is built—and I do not 

mean to sort of parse words here, but the system is built not to test 

that first issue. And what I mean by that is every provider has to 

demonstrate a track record of effectiveness and educational——

Mr. MILLER. I think that is open to question. That is my concern. 

I don’t think all States are really asking that that be demonstrated. 

Mr. COHEN. OK. 

Mr. MILLER. It should. We have no disagreement. 

Mr. COHEN. Well, I think we have a disagreement there. Our experience—and I can only speak for our own experience—is that the 

State applications are fairly rigorous in asking for demonstration 

of alignment to the State curriculum or State standards, demonstrate a track record, as I said, of effectiveness, which I believe 

is actually in the law. 

So if, in fact, the State—I think it gets back to not to the front 

end or the back end——

Chairman BOEHNER. How many States do you operate in? 

Mr. COHEN. We are approved in 35 States. We are working in 

more than 75 school districts across the country. So, to that point, 

we have seen 35 State applications. Many are the same that have 

been adopted through many States. I think the issue, again, is on 

the back end, which is the verification and validation. In other 

words, are the providers doing what they claim they would do in 

their application? 

I agree with you that there may be resource issues up front in 

determining whether or not what goes into that application merits 

or warrants an approval. But the real issue I think is on the back 

end to say whether or not the provider actually accomplished what 

that provider set out to accomplish in the application. 

Mr. MILLER. Ms. Nola-Ganey, let me ask you a question. The system that you put up in your power point yields an awful lot of information and a lot of data. Are you able yet to use that to start 

to delineate differences in terms of effectiveness between programs? And, if so, at some point does the State envision making 

judgments that some programs are better than others? 

32

I know we do not want to get into that. But with all of the effort 

you have gone through, I would assume one of things you want to 

learn is, whether it is 14 hours at $100 an hour, whether it is 40 

hours at $18, you would want to start to be able to determine that, 

to help parents make the right choice with the public resources. 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. That is exactly what our evaluation design is 

intended to do, is to look at the effectiveness of each provider not 

just based on what they tell us they are doing but what is actually 

evident based on outside evaluation, outside test data. 

Mr. MILLER. So, as I understand your testimony, you have the 

standardized test, but you also have other means of matching how 

these children are progressing? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. That is right. But, also, let me add something 

to that. We also have where we approve providers as either fully 

approved or new and emerging. Because if a provider has a record 

of—has the research-based evidence but they do not have a long 

history of effectiveness, we allow them in as a new and emerging 

provider; and as they are new and emerging, they are limited to 

the number of students they can serve, and we monitor them more 

often, provide them much more technical assistance. 

So as part of our research design is also how are we going to take 

those new and emerging providers and move them up to fully approved, based on the data that we are finding out. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Mr. Teasley, could you deal with a question 

that Mr. Cohen was dealing with in terms of your experience in 

terms of the State applications and the State follow-up in terms of 

results? Is it any different than Mr. Cohen’s experience? 

Mr. TEASLEY. We are not in 35 States. We are in one State, in 

Indiana. We did just fill out our application for Colorado. We found 

the application was rigorous. We had to provide a research-based 

program, effective proven program, et cetera. 

Chairman BOEHNER. And aligned with State standards. 

Mr. TEASLEY. Aligned with the State standards. 

In Colorado, it is a little different than Indiana. We went 

through the program last year in Indiana. We just went through 

the program in Colorado and submitted the application literally a 

month ago. 

In addition to submitting the application, they are actually doing 

interviews with the providers. And in addition to the provider applying to be a State provider, a State-approved provider, we are actually having to provide addresses of where we are actually going 

to provide the service, which is a little difficult on the provider because you do not know which district needs the service. At the time 

you are doing the application, you have a list that is provided by 

the State, but you do not know if that list is going to be true when 

you start providing a service. 

So it is a little bit difficult, kind of a catch–22. Why would you 

go through lining up the locations if you don’t know where you are 

going to actually be needed? But, nonetheless, we did do that; and 

we have our interview in 2 weeks with Colorado. 

If you do not mind, I want to clarify a little bit on the issue of 

$18 an hour and $100 an hour. Quite frankly, I do not care how 

much you do charge per hour. We really should not get in the busiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:57 Oct 27, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\COMPLETE\4-26-0~1\20815.TXT NNIXON
33

ness of counting seat time. We need to be starting to look at academic achievement. So if, indeed, you can measure the achievement, and the achievement is terrific, than you can have a rubric 

to where, you know, 10 hours of tutoring for $1,400 is worth it, 

whereas if you do $18 an hour, which we do, maybe it is not so 

good. I am talking about ourselves. OK? So why would you want 

to do that for 80 hours? You don’t. 

Mr. MILLER. The point of my question is whether or not Louisiana would be in a position, over time, where they could start to 

delineate whether they were differences, whether more hours made 

a difference, or fewer hours, or the program, two different style 

programs. It wasn’t a question of the compensation patterns, just 

whether or not the data was set up to yield the information so they 

could start making some judgments about what, in fact, was effective. 

Mr. TEASLEY. I would like to comment, by the way, on her program. We are a charter school in Indiana, and we have a student 

testing number. I believe every State has that. The data for every 

student in every State is on a State-based data collection system. 

It would make perfect sense to have this lined up, the SES program with the State testing number that every student has, and 

then—I do not know if that is what you already do? 

Chairman BOEHNER. That might be too practical. 

Mr. TEASLEY. That might be too practical. It is already created. 

You wouldn’t have to buy it. You have already have the system in 

Illinois. 

Mr. KLINE. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank all of the witnesses 

for being here today. Terrific testimony. It is a great subject. It is 

a program that I think all of us on this committee want to see succeed, I hope, around the country. Fascinating to me to listen to the 

compelling case that Ms. Swanson makes about the very large district in Chicago public schools and the need for them to deal directly and then hear Mr. Cohen say, yeah, but then we are going 

to do several hundred contract negotiations. It has been very helpful and informative to me. 

We have had a couple of questions so far, which I cannot remember if it was Mr. Miller or Chairman Boehner who went down—

started going down the road about obstacles to participation; and 

I was fascinated to hear about public service announcements and 

time on television and radio and mail sent that apparently gets 

thrown away. I have some familiarity with that kind of situation. 

At the risk of seeming to be extremely naive, let me just explore 

the possibility of the information being sent home in the backpack, 

and I understand that puts us in a little bit of the dilemma that 

Chairman Boehner was talking about of conflicting needs of the 

districts. But it seems to me that the Louisiana data base, which 

just is fabulously successful and I hope you are able to work that 

negotiation, by the way, does not that data base allow you to track 

the students that are eligible and those that are participating and 

those that are not and wouldn’t that then allow you, the school district and/or the State, to follow up with those students who are eligible but not participating with another note sent home in the 

backpack or something? Can you address that? 

34

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. We did try to do that. In Orleans, as I said, 

we had streetcar announcements, we sent out flyers, we even got 

the preachers to help us. We have a 1–800 number that we have 

plastered everywhere. Because we wanted to track the calls that 

came in from parents because you cannot force them to do it. They 

have to want to do it. 

So we tracked the number of calls, and we did get an increase 

in the number of calls. 

But when it got down to—I think there is also obstacles when 

it gets down to the school and the district level, if they are not 

being receptive to the parents who are calling—I mean, we track 

the calls, but we also had them, you know, we had to refer them 

to the principals. And so the principals are not being receptive. It 

is just—it is a lot of issues in there. 

Mr. KLINE. I concede that there must be a lot of issues. 

Something fundamentally I do not understand about the system, 

when you have the information about the students that are eligible 

and those that are enrolled, you obviously have the students who 

are eligible but not enrolled, and why do not you have the mechanism for contacting them directly? I mean, why do we need the 

radio and the television and the preachers and whatever other 

mechanisms? Why can’t we reach those students and parents directly? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. I think they are being reached directly. They 

are all being sent home information. If they are in a Title 1 eligible 

school, they are sent home the information to their parents. But it 

is a matter of getting the parents to take the next step. It is a 

struggle. We would certainly welcome your recommendations on 

how we could do that better. 

Mr. KLINE. I was looking for your recommendation. 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. We are struggling here. 

Mr. KLINE. Have I just fundamentally missed it? 

Ms. SWANSON. No. We actually just started with that. We did 

that exact thing. We sent something home in the backpack. The report card pickup is April 20th for all of elementary schools. We 

started sending out information regarding SES for next year, just 

saying, you know, please stay tuned. Your children may be eligible. 

You will get more specific information as it goes on. And we are 

going to do it at the end of school year before the kids go home. 

That is our initial step is to literally hand children, you know, 

the information to bring home to parents. Then it is a follow-up. 

It is amazing the gap of time that—the summer, that people forget 

to register, et cetera. That is when we really start media pushes, 

just to keep the brain remembering that SES is coming. But we do 

do that. 

Mr. KLINE. OK. 

Mr. TEASLEY. Sometimes we may be forgetting about who we are 

trying to serve here. I do run a charter school; and literally—I 

mean, I am not saying this is every child, but a lot of the children 

we are trying to serve, we are talking about mom and dad, they 

are not home. They are being raised by grandma. They are being 

raised by a guardian. Literally in my school, which, you know, the 

guardian of the student has to make the proactive choice to come 

to my school. Nonetheless, they are getting in trouble too. 

35

A dad was charged with rape 2 weeks ago, a father of one of my 

students charged with rape. Now, he is married, right? He is 

charged with rape. The mother tried to overdose on drugs, tried to 

get her kid to do the same. Now the kid is in child protective services. 

You send something home about SES with this kid in their backpack, who is going to read it for that little kid? This is not——

Mr. KLINE. They do not have the ability to get the note signed 

back from the guardian or parent? 

Mr. TEASLEY. It is very difficult. 

Mr. KLINE. But you can track it. I guess—I see my time has expired. But I am just really impressed with the STAR program that 

Louisiana has. It looks to me—I guess I was trying to explore another, you know, potential use for the thing. And my time has expired. But I highly encourage the two ends of the table to come to 

common ground here, and maybe we need to talk to the State of 

Illinois. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CASTLE. [Presiding.] Mr. Kildee. 

Mr. KILDEE. Before I start my questions, Mr. Teasley, your statement about some homes aren’t really qualified to make decisions 

for their kids, wouldn’t it be better if we had the school be able to 

make, in some instances, the choice of sending a child to these tutoring services? 

Mr. TEASLEY. I think in many cases it would be very helpful if 

the schools would help. I wouldn’t mandate the schools, but I would 

think if a school, like in my case, understands there is difficulties 

at home, that there are counseling opportunities for the child, and 

the child can actually work with——

And IPS is actually working with us. They called us 2 weeks ago 

and they said, there is 300 kids who have yet to take SES programs; and they want us to provide that service to them over the 

summer. So IPS, Indianapolis Public Schools, is actually wanting 

to work with us and actually help us market our program, more 

so to the two schools in particular, because they know where these 

300 kids are, and they want to go with us to the principal and say, 

would you market this thing to these kids again and again? 

But that is a district that really wants to see this happen. There 

is another district in which we are operating, and that is in Gary. 

We have been operating since January, and we haven’t been paid 

a penny yet. That is difficult. Are you in Gary? We haven’t been 

paid a penny. Here it is at the end of April, and we have encountered all of these payroll costs and services that we have rendered, 

and we haven’t been paid a penny. Now the District of Gary, I 

would say, is just not as inviting as Indianapolis is. 

Mr. KILDEE. Well, I think, in my district, we have a school district where a mandate to the school to enroll a student in the SES 

would be very helpful to hundreds and hundreds of students. Perhaps if we fully funded Title 1, which would be about $23 billion 

this year rather than the—$22 billion rather than the 13, the 

school would have the resources to—if we are going to mandate, we 

should follow the mandate with the dollars. 

Mr. TEASLEY. Are you suggesting compulsory SES attendance? 

36

Mr. KILDEE. I think when there is a dysfunctional family that 

somehow the school system should be able to at least have greater 

influence over the child in getting them into an SES program. But 

that is my own feeling. I do not fear Federal mandates entirely as 

long as we fund the mandate, and we haven’t fully funded No Child 

Left Behind. 

That is the first argument I got in with the President and the 

last argument I got in with the President about fully funding. But 

if we fully funded Title 1, we could do much more here. 

Let me read a statement from the New York Times. It says, we 

want as little regulation as possible so the market can be as vibrant as possible, Michael Petrelli, an official with the Federal 

Education Department, told tutoring company officials at a recent 

business meeting organized by the education industry. 

With that in mind, let me address a question to Ms. Swanson. 

When you say the U.S. Department of Education has advised you 

that it is not your role to hold SES providers accountable, do you 

get a sense that they are finding other ways to hold them accountable or that accountability is not happening to the extent necessary? 

Ms. SWANSON. Perhaps Illinois—it seems to me, Illinois is being 

pointed out as perhaps a unique circumstance, but I do not know 

necessarily that it is. But we do not feel there is a lot of accountability right now; and Mr. Petrelli has said that numerous times 

in various articles. When we took the steps and now over a 5-

month process removed a provider from our schools we were told 

that we should not second-guess the State. That is not our role. 

So, no, because we know in Illinois the State has not been able 

to have the capacity to monitor this. So we have tried to step in, 

but we really do not think there is accountability measures out 

there right now that are at least strong enough. 

Mr. KILDEE. What was the Department of Education’s rationale 

for not letting the Chicago public schools use data on student performance to hold providers accountable? 

Ms. SWANSON. We would like to use our data or evaluation results to at least provide good choices so—not a laundry list of 75 

vendors that we are not sure we know much about. I would go back 

to the rigor of some State’s applications. 

I would encourage you to look at Illinois. I have done a lot of 

funding for after school, 21st Century Learning Centers, other Federal grants; and I have turned in, you know, grants that are hundreds of pages long for much less money than this. So I do not see 

that happening in SES, in every State there is not even a very difficult application. 

Mr. KILDEE. What was their rationale for not letting your school 

system to use data, student performance data? 

Ms. SWANSON. We can track that data, and we are to give it to 

the State, and then the State should do something. What we have 

been told is that the State won’t—you know, I believe that is in the 

guidance, that it is 2 years. They have to have 2 consecutive years. 

We really do not have good data on last year. So our data this 

year is coming out this summer. And we would like to at least if 

not shorten the list to the real high-quality providers or at least indicate the ones who have had great success—and, unfortunately, 

37

today there was another article in Chicago that said the U.S. Department of Education is even leery about us putting out that type 

of information to parents—just so they are informed consumers. 

So every time we would like to at least publish results of evaluations or data, we are getting pushed back on that as well. 

Mr. KILDEE. Could some providers do a better job in an urban 

school setting like Flint, Michigan, or Chicago than maybe in a 

suburban or rural area? 

Ms. SWANSON. I can only really speak to what I am seeing in the 

urban area. I am not sure of the differences. We are definitely seeing differences in our providers currently. I think some institutions 

do have a long history of this type of programming and are 

equipped for the capacity that they are seeing in places like New 

York or LA or Chicago. But I honestly do not feel that I can make 

a good comparison to what is happening in the rural districts. 

Mr. KILDEE. One final question, Mr. Chairman. Your office of 

after school and community programs, do you also have control 

over the 21st Century Learning Centers in that? 

Ms. SWANSON. Yeah. 

Mr. KILDEE. Can you integrate that with the SESes in any way? 

Ms. SWANSON. We do. We actually have been at various after 

school conferences throughout the Nation showing how 21st Century and SES can work in partnership in schools. And that—I 

mean, again, you know, CPS has really embraced SES and is moving its agenda forward for after school programming. 

But 21st Century money allows you to do very different things 

than SES money. If you can have your children in the rigorous 

reading and math programs of SES and then go into some of the 

family programming and enrichment, art, music, theatre that can 

happen in 21st Century, you end up with a very robust after school 

program; and that is really one of things that CPS is trying to do. 

But we do work with a number of our schools to try to get that 

partnership happening at the school level. 

Mr. KILDEE. I commend you personally for what you are doing. 

Mr. CASTLE. I will yield myself 5 minutes. 

Let me just start by saying that I agree with a lot that has been 

said today. My sense is when you write laws like this, particularly 

this particular section which was a couple of years out, 2 or 3 years 

out, sometimes perhaps it is not written as carefully, the regulations aren’t quite as careful as they should be. I am not too sure 

we shouldn’t be making some adjustments. 

I think it is a very worthwhile hearing. I mean, I will tell you 

one thing that goes through my mind and that is, why don’t we 

make all incentives illegal immediately and just be done with it? 

The idea of giving things out to get contracts bothers the heck out 

of me. 

But let me—just a couple of issues that I have in mind. One is, 

there is a very good article in my—I am from Delaware—my local 

paper, a big headline article, Christina After School Pilot Program 

Will Be Used as Model for the U.S. Basically, it is a program from 

a fledgling, they say, for-profit group, Options for Education, Vancouver, Washington; and our largest school district, the Christina 

school district, is basically using it. And it uses more local services 

38

in the area and that kind of thing than do some of the other programs that are there. 

But what struck me as something, Mr. Teasley, both you and Mr. 

Cohen—well, Mr. Cohen did not allude to it, but I think references 

his sister company here, and that is the cost of some of these 

things, which frankly does disturb me quite a bit because of the 

limitations. 

For example, in this particular school district, they have $713 

per student. And this gentleman who runs this operation—schools 

are getting robbed, said Mike Forzley, CEO of Options for Education. Some of these supplemental service providers are charging 

$50, $60, $70 an hour to tutor children, and they are not connected 

with the school. That does not go very far, $713, if that is true. Then it says that Sylvan Learning Center agrees $713 won’t get a child far. The Center charges $43 to $48 an hour, and most children spend 50 to 60 hours to get to grade level. 

That is 713 by divided by 43 to 48 doesn’t get you the 50 to 60. 

And the 50 to 60, according to another person who was cited here, 

is probably needed in order to bring a person to grade level. So—

I mean, garbage in is garbage out. I understand that. But my concern is that, you know, when you create an economic-type program 

that is perhaps a program that is now in the millions, it is going 

to be in the billions of dollars, a lot of people are rushing in to fill 

it. That is fine. I don’t have a problem with good economic competition. But if they are rushing in to fill it and they are making a lot 

of money and the job is not being done, and Mr. Cohen has already 

indicated we should be assessing these programs more than we are, 

then I have a problem with that. 

So I do not just take it, in fact, just because a program is work- ing at $50 an hour, it is necessarily better than a program that is 

working not quite as well at, say, $10 an hour on the basis of the 

number of hours. I think most of us understand in education that 

repetition, going back constantly, is a pretty significant item; and 

we are limited in what we can do. We cannot have open-ended programs. I do not doubt that some of the more expensive programs 

might work well, but I sort of—I do not want to accept at face 

value the statement that the dollars are not significant here. I 

think they are a significant part of it. 

Can you both give brief statements on that, please? 

Mr. COHEN. I will start. I think something that we have to keep 

in mind is that we have created a marketplace through this law. 

And I think something that is paramount to remember is, and I 

tried to allude to this in my testimony, is we are creating a class 

of educational consumers that we haven’t seen before. We are giving a purchasing opportunity to low-income parents. 

Mr. CASTLE. In a way, we are giving it to the districts, not just 

to the low-income parents. They are the ones who are going to 

make the decisions on what continues and what does not. The parents are going to take whatever they are fed, in part. 

Mr. COHEN. Today across the country there are more than 1,500 

approved providers. So there is a wide variety for parents to choose 

from. 

Mr. CASTLE. It is not necessarily district by district. It is the district that is feeding it to the particular parents. 

39

Mr. COHEN. But even in many districts—and I don’t know, in 

Chicago, there are dozens of providers to choose from among the 

parents. And we would argue as——

Mr. CASTLE. The facts are I think there are in some cases and 

there are not in dozens in other cases. 

Mr. COHEN. Agree. But even if there are two or three, the point 

is a marketplace over time should sort out the issue that you just 

raised. 

Mr. CASTLE. But wouldn’t you agree we need the evaluation you 

talked about before? Without the evaluation, I think we have a significant problem in terms of determining where the worth really is. 

Mr. COHEN. I think that has to be a fundamental premise and 

principle here, that we have to be—that all of the providers I think 

would agree that there needs to be accountability and a way to determine whether or not the programs are being effective. 

But among—let’s say if you assume that you have multiple providers that have proven that they are effective and you have that 

system in place, then the marketplace will lead the consumers to 

the most effective programs for the cost. 

Because if one provider is at $10 an hour and another provider 

is at $50 an hour, parents are going to choose the best program for 

their kids. And it likely means that is going to be the most effective 

program with the most hours. 

Mr. CASTLE. Well, I do not want to argue with you. And my time 

is up. But I do not totally—I mean, this is an argument, as opposed 

to my understanding it and your not understanding it, because I 

am not sure if I am right. 

But I just question how much the parents are going to be involved in those decisions. Based on what I know of this program, 

you are doing with lower-income circumstances. It has already been 

pointed out that some of the parents can’t even make the decision, 

do not have the ability, we cannot even get it to them to make the 

decisions to get into the program. I just wonder if those same parents are just going to accept whatever is given to them without any 

kind of real determination of the value of it. 

But I worry even more about the school districts, because of just 

inside power reasons, whatever it may be, for not making the decisions either. So I am a little worried about all that. I would like 

to see good outside independent judgment on this. But let me go 

to Mr. Teasley. 

Mr. TEASLEY. Just two comments. One, of the charging per hour, 

$50, $18, whatever it is, Members of Congress need to keep in 

mind that the cost incurred by the provider is set. Whether the student shows up or not, we are paying the teachers and the tutors. 

And that has happened to us. We thought we could do it. Math. 

You have 10 kids. You charge $18 an hour. That is $180 in 1 hour. 

You have got your teacher, your tutor, your assistants, et cetera. 

You got your room, your computers, and your supplies all worked 

out in that $180 per hour. 

Well, guess what? You do not get 10 kids per hour. And if you 

do not get 10 kids, you do not get paid for 10 kids. Maybe you get 

five. Maybe you get two. Maybe you get eight. It is all over the 

map. 

40

So, quite frankly, while we charge $18 an hour, I think we are 

cutting our feet off by doing that. We are actually talking about increasing the rate so that we can cover our losses, so to speak. We 

are a non-profit. We are not a group that goes out of business. So 

we have got to be careful with that. 

What was the other issue you were just talking about at the end, 

because I wanted to comment on that. Parents being led by the 

schools. I think—it is anecdotal, but I believe it is fair to say that 

a number of teachers have suggested to the students who need the 

SES to go with X program. I think that is fair to say, that that is 

going on. Principals are also saying, go with this program, not that 

one. So the parents are being fed a line as to which program to go 

to. 

And I do not know what is happening on the other end. I am not 

making any accusations, but I do know that principals and teachers are making recommendations to parents about which program 

they should go to. 

Mr. CASTLE. And, boy, if they got a computer for doing that, that 

would sure bother me, or got a computer if maybe they would do 

it, that would sure bother me. I am not suggesting that has happened, but there has been indications that that is a possibility, too. 

But my time is well up here. I just think there is a lot of questions about this. I think the evaluations, the assessments, really 

understanding what we are doing is vitally important. I mean, basically we up here in this business are here to educate these kids 

better. 

You may be in business, running a non-profit or whatever, it may 

be for other reasons. We have got to understand what the heck is 

going on. I am not comfortable that we really have our arms 

around this; and I think we ought to do it now, right now, before 

it is too late, before it is such a big business that it is going to be 

very hard to take apart again and make it completely correct. 

With that, let me yield to Ms. Woolsey for 5 minutes. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you. 

I wanted to respond to the chairman’s comment to Ms. Swanson 

suggesting that she was saying: Trust us. That is not what I heard 

her say. I heard her say, we actually would like more oversight. 

And when you talk about trust us, I am sure we have all read 

the New York Times April 4th article where they suggested that 

there is little oversight of the quality of instruction offered by supplemental service providers and also described, as Chairman Castle 

just talked of, providing parents and students incentives to participate in the programs. Not convincing them about the quality, but 

offering incentives such as computers, gift certificates, et cetera, et 

cetera. 

Then we have an administration that likes to talk about the importance of accountability for Federal funds. They responded just 

recently, regarding the supplemental service programs, quote, we 

want as little regulation as possible so the market can be as vibrant as possible. 

So where, I ask you, is the accountability for what could become 

over $2 billion in supplemental services? You cannot have accountability in one part of education policy and not in the other. 

41

So, Dr. Nola-Ganey, I have a question for you. In your testimony 

you mentioned that you are providing assistance to the programs 

that aren’t measuring up. My question is, these are supposed to be 

the experts. If they are not measuring up, why aren’t we getting 

rid of them? Because we are telling our schools that are in the 

greatest need that if they don’t measure up they are in trouble. So 

what would make that——

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. Well, first of all, the law says that they have 

2 years to be on the list, for the State to evaluate them. We want 

our children to have the very best. So if they—for example, if they 

are a new and emerging provider, we do go in and help them. We 

have an advantage, because our State has invested heavily in after 

school programs with other funding. So we do have a cadre of employees who are fantastic to be able to provide assistance to providers. So, yes, we do go in and provide assistance to our providers. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, thank you. It would be my impression that 

if we are bringing in experts, that they should not require a lot of 

help. Because we should be giving that help to the educational institutions in the first place. 

Ms. Swanson, this is a rhetorical question, but I would like you 

to talk about this. The struggling schools, the schools that need improvement, aren’t they facing the exact same problems that the 

supplemental services programs are talking about that they are 

having problems with? Parents that are in great need, kids that do 

not have books, the whole thing. Why is it OK that these programs 

can say we cannot do it because we have got these problems, these 

are our challenges, and we aren’t supporting our schools who have 

the same challenges? We are telling those schools, measure up or 

get out of education. 

I know I am being coarse, since I haven’t asked you exactly what 

I want to know. Here, I do have a question. If we put the same 

investment into the schools and into the after school programs, 

would we not have the same amount of improvement? 

Ms. SWANSON. I would think so. We, specifically in our after 

school programs, do consider it almost an extension of the school 

day. We really align all that we do. Before when we were a provider we took the time to align all of our after school programs 

with reading and math initiatives that we have seen, all of the 

scores that I have talked about in my past testimony, of what has 

been happening in the past decade. 

So, yes, absolutely. If we invested this money in the regular 

school day, lengthened the day—Chicago has one of the shortest 

days in the country—we could start seeing these results. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you. 

Mr. Teasley, you said that these programs should be in the classroom first and then second for after school programs and the tutoring, in your testimony. My question is, with limited funds, where 

should that be spent first, in the classroom or outside of the classroom? 

Mr. TEASLEY. Well, first of all, I wanted to comment on that last 

question that you asked her. The difference between the school and 

the after school tutoring program is that the school is compulsory 

and the after school tutoring program is not. It is choice. So schools 

are having to deal with these challenges, the same challenges that 

42

we have with the SES. But they have an advantage in that it is 

compulsory education. Children must go to school during the day. 

They do not have to take advantage of the SES program. 

Now in your second question as to where the money should be 

spent——

Ms. WOOLSEY. First. 

Mr. TEASLEY. First. I had the honor of hosting Secretary Paige 

last year, 2 years ago—actually, last year and the year before he 

came to Indianapolis; and he made it very clear that NCLB is a 

floor. It is not a ceiling. And, quite frankly, you do not need NCLB 

to be providing supplemental education services right now in any 

district. Any district that wants to contract with Sylvan or us, they 

can do that with or without being a needs improvement school. 

So I actually think that, you know, if they have the money for 

the after school tutoring, and that is I believe compulsory, you have 

to spend a certain percentage of your dollars through NCLB on 

SES programs for certain students that qualify. If you have those 

dollars and you are spending those dollars on the after school tutoring program, I do not see why a district that isn’t in the needs 

improvement category can’t look at what, say, what Mr. Cohen is 

doing with his program, and let’s institute that now so that we do 

not get to the point of being a needs improvement school. There is 

nothing that stops the school from doing that right now. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, yes, there is. It is called funding. 

Mr. TEASLEY. Well, they are either going to do it through being 

compelled to do it, by becoming a needs improvement school, or 

they are going to do it on a voluntary basis. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. But my question is, shouldn’t that money be spent 

in the school first? 

Mr. TEASLEY. Well, I think the U.S. Government provides, in the 

Title 1 program, the flexibility for school districts to choose how 

they want to spend those dollars specifically on reading and math. 

So the school districts do have that flexibility right now. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you. 

Chairman BOEHNER. [Presiding.] The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Price. 

Mr. PRICE. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. 

I appreciate also your testimony, and thank you for coming this 

afternoon. 

I am interested in, as Representative Kline said, at the risk of 

being naive, how does what we are doing now differ from what we 

did before the program was instituted? I guess this would be for 

you, Ms. Nola-Ganey and Ms. Swanson. How is what we are doing 

now different, and how do the results differ? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. From what? 

Mr. PRICE. Before we instituted the supplemental, the SES. 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. How does it differ? Well, before schools did not 

have to provide. Schools in need of——

Mr. PRICE. What did you do with these students? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. Well, a lot of our schools in Louisiana have remediation programs. We had other extra help type programs. But 

it is on a district by district level. 

43

Mr. PRICE. And how are the results different now compared to 

what—the results you were getting with those students different 

now? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. I do not think that we have the answer to that 

question yet. We will, though, at the end of this school year, to see 

if, in fact, these programs have, in fact, made a difference. 

Mr. PRICE. Ms. Swanson. 

Ms. SWANSON. Before SES, either—we had a commitment to 

after school programs, and we were running our own district level 

program. We compared those programs to the SES programs of last 

year. There is no statistical difference between them. 

I do not think—there is not a lot new happening except that, obviously, there is a new, you know, cordon of vendors coming in and 

helping us do that in our after school time. 

We basically, like I said, did similar things, reading and math instruction. It wasn’t mandated. It was by choice. Our after school 

programs have an 85 percent attendance rate. We are doing good 

things in after school. 

Mr. PRICE. So I understand you are using $50 million annually. 

Are you getting anything for that $50 million? 

Ms. SWANSON. We do not know yet. You know, it is helping us 

perhaps reach more students. Before SES, we were reaching close 

to 200,000. This year, we will have a good gauge if that money is 

reaching even more students, which we obviously think it will be. 

But, other than that, no, we haven’t seen the results. 

Mr. PRICE. But you think you are reaching more students. Is that 

accurate? 

Ms. SWANSON. We hope. We do not have that finalized. We will 

at the end of the school year. 

Mr. PRICE. Mr. Cohen, I understand your—Catapult is in 35 

States or thereabouts? 

Mr. COHEN. Yes. We are approved in 35 states. 

Mr. PRICE. What percent of your revenue comes from State or 

taxpayer dollars and what percent from private individuals? 

Mr. COHEN. Our Catapult Learning business actually predates 

No Child Left Behind. All of our revenue comes from public funds. 

We are—the premise of the company is a public-private partnership. So we only work with school districts. And, actually, Mr. 

Teasley had alluded to this. We have worked with Chicago for 

years prior to NCLB. We have worked with districts in Louisiana 

for years——

Mr. PRICE. But in my area in Georgia, if somebody wanted to 

take a Sylvan learning course, they could——

Mr. COHEN. Different company. 

For example, we worked for years in Atlanta public schools 

where we sat down with the schools and decided which students in 

which schools needed the greatest help and designed a program exactly as Mr. Teasley was suggesting that would be in—now in a No 

Child Left Behind world would essentially be a preventive program 

to look at those students in the disaggregate subgroups, identify 

which are likely to push the school into an AYP challenge, and design a program to try to prevent that. 

Mr. PRICE. I can’t remember whether it was you, Mr. Teasley, or 

Mr. Cohen. You said that we have created an industry. 

44

Mr. COHEN. That was probably me. 

Mr. PRICE. And I would—no one can argue with our goal of providing services to students in need. In view of the fact that we have 

created an industry, is that the best way to reach that goal? I 

guess this is for everybody. 

Mr. COHEN. I guess I will take a stab first. 

I think the issue is which goal you are trying to achieve. Our understanding of the supplemental services provisions is that they 

are supposed to be immediate and in-term in nature. 

In other words, we have determined that something is not working right in a school. But we do not want to forsake the students 

in that school. So we want to give them something extraordinary, 

something extra. The reason I use the term ‘‘industry’’ is simply because we have created this marketplace. It is new. I think potentially it is a very vibrant marketplace, where we now go to those 

parents in that school and say you get to make a choice. These are 

parents that have never had the opportunity to make that choice 

before. 

Mr. PRICE. My time is short. I would be interested in the comments of the other panel members about it. Is this the best way 

to reach that goal of providing those services for students in need? 

Mr. TEASLEY. My quick response is, it is a good way, if not a best 

way. We have a good 50 additional service providers in the State 

of Indiana right now as a result of No Child Left Behind. They did 

not exist before the law was passed. So now you have got 50 additional service providers. 

And I think it is important from an educational perspective that 

we recognize that students learn—have multiple ways of learning. 

Howard Gardner suggests that there are seven ways that a child 

learns, whether it is musically, environmentally or otherwise. 

Mr. PRICE. That was known before No Child Left Behind. 

Mr. TEASLEY. Fine. But we have traditionally—and I hate to use 

a blanket statement—one system. And we need to. And that is why 

charter schools are growing across the country. We now have over 

3,500 different choices from the system, the one system. 

The supplemental service providers, there is 50 different ones in 

Indiana alone. They do it differently. So I think it is a good thing. 

Mr. PRICE. If I can get a quick answer. 

Ms. SWANSON. CPS is ultimately committed to highly educating 

kids. We also welcome choice. We welcome, you know, innovation. 

We welcome charter schools and contract schools. We have doing 

that for some years now. But, the bottom line, we do not know if 

SES is going to do it. 

Mr. PRICE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BOEHNER. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 

Minnesota. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, excuse me. Could I ask unanimous 

consent to enter my opening statement into the record? 

Chairman BOEHNER. Without objection. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Woolsey follows:]

Statement of Hon. Lynn C. Woolsey, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of California 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. 

45

I am pleased that you share the concerns that our Ranking Member, Mr. Miller, 

I, and others expressed two weeks ago when we requested a hearing on supplemental services. 

As we get closer to reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, the first thing we 

must understand is how it is being implemented and the impact that is having on 

our children. 

And, when it comes to implementation of supplemental services, we have some 

serious concerns. 

An April 4 New York Times article, which I’m sure we all read, suggested that 

there is little oversight of the quality of instruction offered by supplemental service 

providers. 

The article also described providers inducing parents and students to participate 

in their programs not by convincing them of their quality, but by offering incentives 

such as computers and gift certificates. 

Despite all this, Bush Administration officials, who like to talk about the importance of accountability for federal funds, have responded that ‘‘[w]e want as little 

regulation as possible so the market can be as vibrant as possible.’’

If a vibrant market means not knowing whether programs are helping our children learn and bribing parents and children to make educational decisions, I think 

more oversight is called for. 

It is important to remember that this is not about whether one or another specific 

program is doing a good job today, but about creating a system to ensure that every 

program is accountable for doing a good job for our children. 

It also is important to remember that when, according to a recent survey, only 

27 percent of states said there was sufficient NCLB funding to enable them to monitor the quality of supplemental service providers, this also is about this Administration’s and this Congress’ gross underfunding of NCLB. 

For fiscal year 2006, the gap between what the President promised our children 

and their schools and what he wants to provide them is $12 billion. 

That simply is unacceptable. 

All of which is why today’s hearing is so important. 

Again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing and look forward to 

listening to our panel. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Ms. McCollum. 

Ms. MCCOLLUM. Thank you. 

I did have an opportunity to read your testimony. As you know, 

I haven’t been sitting here. I have been across the hall where 1 

million children just in Africa die every year under the age of 5 of 

malaria. So, unfortunately, I did not get to hear everything, but my 

staff has kept me apprised about what is going on. So I have a couple of questions. 

I think one of the things that came out loud and clear when I 

was teaching, as a parent, and from some of the testimony here, 

lack of parent involvement leads to lack of a child’s often ability to 

get ahead, overcome these struggles and those challenges. Because 

if it is not important to mom and dad, why should it be important 

to me? 

To that point, an issue of transportation, getting to the supplemental services. Does that then become an additional burden? And 

I do say burden, because many of our school districts right now, as 

you know, are facing cutbacks in their dollars. We are expecting 

more for them, we are giving them less. So the issue of transportation and parental involvement and how that is tracked would be 

interesting to me. 

In charter schools, you often have the ability, and I know in Minnesota, to limit class size in a charter school, where a public school 

if, you know, 50 more kids show up opening day, 50 more, you find 

room for them. 

46

So I am curious as to know what are the class size averages for 

some of these additional learning services that are being provided. 

Are some done in small group settings? Is this all one on one? 

When you go through and evaluate, are you paying the same for 

one on one tutoring as you would for a group of children that are 

being tutored? Is there a pay scale difference whether I have a 

highly qualified teacher doing the tutoring versus a paraprofessional versus a student teacher? And all of them can be very effective and used in different ways. 

But I am just wondering, if one set of dollars is going out and I am paying $18 per child per session, it doesn’t make any difference if it is one on one with a highly qualified teacher, one on 

one with a student teacher, or if it is , you know, six or eight in 

a group. Because these dollars are hard—very, very hard to come 

by. Because we found one of the most determining factors outside 

of parental involvement and having a highly qualified teacher was 

the student to teacher ratio. 

Sometimes we haven’t done a very good job in our public schools 

funding those schools, providing the infrastructure to have that 

kind of ratio. So I would be interested in hearing how you are handling the ratio and monitoring it as well as the transportation. 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. Well, I will try to answer a couple of those 

questions. 

First of all, the transportation issue. We have a bonus in our 

scoring rubric as we scored the providers’ applications. If they 

agree to provide the services at the school, they will get extra 

points, because it is a burden for the school districts to transport 

the children as well as it is a burden on the parents. 

Also, it depends on, as far as the size of the instruction, the one 

on one versus small group. It depends on the model that is being 

proposed in the application. The dollars that we pay range from 

$18 an hour to $32 an hour. So it depends on the model that is 

being proposed as to whether we, you know, whether we approve 

or not. We do not have a feel yet, and we hope to have the feel for 

whether it is more—one way is more effective than the other as far 

as the numbers of student-teacher ratio. 

Mr. TEASLEY. In our program, we do not provide transportation 

in Indianapolis. We do provide it in Gary. We are working from 

three churches in Gary, and they provide the transportation from 

the school to the church facility. And we also have wrap-around 

services there, meaning we have a nonteacher who actually calls 

the parents if the students do not show up, finds out what is going 

on. 

Then we have a certified teacher for every 10 students and an 

aide, usually a college student, assisting in that 10. So it is a oneto-five ratio, if you look at it in raw numbers like that. 

Our program—actually, we have computers for every child. So 

every child will be sitting down using a software program that focused on math and reading, and actually we provide a pre-test and 

a post-test to the districts so that they can understand what was 

accomplished in the time and in how much time. 

Since our program—while I appreciate what Louisiana has done 

on a Statewide basis, we have done that in our own program; and 

we can connect that up and show it to the district just like that. 

47

We can tell you how many hours the child was on X State standard, and whether they mastered it or not. And if they—you know, 

and how many of the standards they mastered. 

So while it may seem like we have got a one-to-five ratio, quite 

frankly, we try to get it down to one-to-one, because we have students on computers doing the individualized lesson plan that has 

been focused for their attention, and then the student teacher and/

or the teacher is working individually with a child on their specific 

needs, whether it is reading or math. That is what we do. 

Mr. COHEN. I will try to address a couple of the points that you 

raised. 

On transportation, we agree it is a burden, and our preference 

is to work in the schools in partnership with the schools, the principals, the classroom teachers, for the most part, while—we are 

providing SES programs in more than 500 schools across the country. If you visited any of our programs, you would find the vast majority of the teachers are teaching in a six-or-eight-to-one studentteacher ratio. And those teachers are teachers from that school, 

typically classroom teachers, because we believe that there has to 

be a connection between what is happening in the classroom and 

what is happening after school. 

We want there to be recognizable continuity. The students are familiar with the teachers. The teachers are familiar with the curriculum. So we find, for our program, that works best. 

In terms of the parent outreach issue that you raised, parent involvement is one of the fundamental tenets of all of our programs, 

not only of our SES programs. We have talked about it. We have 

talked about it several times during this conversation. But these 

parents are as equipped as any parents to make good determinations and choices for their children. They just need to get involved, 

and these programs actually have the opportunity to generate that 

involvement. We take it as our responsibility to reach out to them. 

We do it regularly. We have—whether we are hosting dinners or 

calling them or sending backpack messages or all of the above, we 

take that very seriously, trying to communicate with the parents. 

And when you see that communication happen regularly, you are 

seeing a parent get more involved in their child’s education. 

Ms. SWANSON. Regarding cost, there is not a lot of difference in 

the Illinois process right now. Looking at, you know, how many 

hours of service the tutors—the tutor-student ratios, et al, we are 

finding—actually, that is in some of our supporting materials. We 

did provide that to the committee—to say that, really, on the application, that sort of a per student allocation dollar sign with a line, 

and it is filled out. There is not a lot of background. So we are finding people with a wide range in programs all coming close to that 

State cap. 

That is one of the things that we are advocating for a little more 

oversight on, particularly with limited dollars, like you said. These 

do not reach to all of our eligible kids. So we want to get them to 

as many as possible. Someone needs to be looking at that. 

Ms. SWANSON. Regarding transportation, the district has allowed 

and always in the last few years under the current administration 

has really invited community agencies into the schools. We have 

the Boys and Girls Club. We have the YMCA serving in our 

48

schools. We want our schools to function as centers of the community. 

We have opened with all of our SES providers and allowed them 

in the buildings, knowing that particularly our parent population 

isn’t showing up at the school with the mini van and taking all the 

kids to various programs throughout the city. They are working 

parents, and they need to have their children safe. So we have 

opened our buildings to try to avoid the transportation obstacle. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Chairman recognizes the gentlelady—the 

Chair recognizes the gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Osborne. 

Mr. OSBORNE. I am glad you caught that, Mr. Chairman. Thank 

you. 

As you can tell, I have been in and out of here, so you are always 

at risk of asking a really dumb question, but I just wanted to get 

up to speed on a couple of issues. 

First of all, is it entirely the parents who decide who is going to 

be tutored? There is not much discretion left to the school as to 

who receives the supplemental program? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. I think the school probably advises the parent, 

yes, but it is ultimately the parents’ decision. 

Mr. OSBORNE. I am really interested in evaluation of these programs, what works, what doesn’t work. And who does that? Does 

the school? Does the provider? And how do you determine cost effectiveness? I have heard widely a vague set of numbers. Is there 

any good way that you are getting at that? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. I will try to answer that. 

The law requires the State to monitor and evaluate. Also, the 

district is required to monitor the provider, the services of the provider. 

In Louisiana, we have a data tracking system where we hope 

to—we have a formal evaluation that is going to be conducted this 

year, and we hope to be able to track students through our student 

information system in our State testing program to see if, in fact, 

the students are making progress. It is very difficult to be able to 

say that it is just SES services that are affecting the results of the 

student, because there are other interventions that are going on 

with the student. So what we are trying to do is take it down to 

the classroom level and run data on the students who are in the 

same class who are taking SES, taking advantage of the SES services and those in the same class who are not taking advantage of 

the SES and see if there is a difference. Those are the types of 

evaluations we are trying to conduct in Louisiana. 

Mr. OSBORNE. Seems like you would have to control for populations. In other words, if most of the kids that you are providing 

the services are in Title I, if 50 percent of them are from fatherless 

homes, there is all that data. It seems that accurate follow-up studies require that. 

A couple of other questions. Who determines the qualification of 

the tutors? I mean, you are talking about some pretty fancy numbers here. Is it possible for somebody who has a high school diploma to become a tutor and make $30an hour? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. The law specifically states that we cannot require that the providers be certified classroom teachers. But we do 

require quality staff, and we have that in our application. 

49

Mr. OSBORNE. How do you determine quality? Is there an educational level of attainment? Do they have to pass a test? Do they 

have to show that they have any expertise in teaching or communicating? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. We do ask in our application that the qualifications of the tutors be given, and we assess that in our scoring 

rubric. We require that they have a model that the services that 

they are providing are in fact research based and have evidence of 

effectiveness. 

Mr. OSBORNE. I have two more quick questions, and I hope I can 

get them in. 

Somebody mentioned that some of these kids have a lot of baggage from home and, you know, away from the school; and mentoring does do a good job of addressing some of those issues. Do you 

see any correlation? Is there any combination of programs where 

a kid may have a mentor plus a tutor? Is there any attempts to 

address some of those dysfunctions that handicap a child from 

being able to learn? 

Mr. TEASLEY. I can only comment. We have a counselor and all 

of our teachers—quite frankly, it may sound silly to say this. Not 

only do we want to have certified teachers but we look for people 

with big hearts. Our teachers are literally mentors to a lot of our 

kids. If you ask the kids what they like most about our school, they 

said the teachers know their name and the principal knows their 

name. You ask them what they hate most about our school is that 

the teachers and the principal knows their name. It works both 

ways. So we are very much involved with all of the children, not 

only the ones who we serve during the day at our school but also 

the after school tutoring program. 

Mr. OSBORNE. Can I ask one more question? It seems like there 

is probably a very wide variety of programs being offered. Do you 

see any necessity for some standardization? A lot of dollars are 

being thrown at this, but do you think it would be wise to see what 

seems to be working and what isn’t working and at least some general guidelines that people would have to fall within—looks like 

kind of a wide-open field right now? 

Mr. COHEN. I will try to respond to that. 

The reason it seems like it is a wide-open field, as we discussed 

a bit earlier, is I don’t think there has been consensus on how to 

evaluate what is taking place. But I think the idea of a wide-open 

field, once providers have been approved, is a good thing. So the 

onus in the law is on the State to approve providers that can show 

that their program is going to be effective. They can demonstrate 

their research bases, can discuss their methodology and can verify 

that that should be educationally effective. 

We want a broad variety of those types of providers in the marketplace. But you have to bolt on to the end of that evaluation to 

make sure that, while you do have an open playing field, you are 

comfortable that the open playing field—there is a choice among effective providers. 

Mr. OSBORNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BOEHNER. If my colleagues would indulge me for a second, I would remind everyone that this entire segment of the education industry is but 3 years old. While there were certainly after 

50

school programs and supplemental programs in the marketplace, 

the requirement that schools in need of improvement for more than 

2 years allow their students to have the supplemental services, has 

spawned a great deal of interest; and I think the reason we are 

holding this hearing today is to kind of take note of where are we, 

what is happening in the marketplace, what is happening in the 

States to try to kind of keep an eye on this as it develops. 

For most States who didn’t have accountability systems in place 

when no No Child Left Behind was signed into law, when we get 

into this fall we are going to see a larger number of students, quite 

frankly, qualify for supplemental services, most likely. So it would 

be a lot more Title I money going into these programs. So I think 

we are learning a lot, and I am glad we are having the hearing. 

The Chair recognizes Mr. Tierney. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I apologize to the witnesses for being late. I think you know the 

schedule doesn’t allow us to be here all the time. I thank you for 

your testimony which was in writing. 

Ms. Swanson, I thought I might ask you a couple of questions, 

because I was interested in the materials you provided us. In particular, all your Supplemental Educational Services that you provide—and you may have already testified on this basis—but how 

is it that you select which providers of that service are qualified in 

terms of the requirement that they have done this and been successful and have a record of success in the past? 

Ms. SWANSON. We don’t as a district. It is basically the State 

puts out an approved list of vendors, and we are to contract with 

those vendors as parents choose them. 

Mr. TIERNEY. You have no say in that at all as a local district. 

So if you question somebody that the State has on that list if you 

are not satisfied, is there any recourse for you? 

Ms. SWANSON. Not yet. Notably, one provider that we have questioned brought that to the State. The guidelines state, even with 

that information, they must remain on the approved list for 2 consecutive years; and they have only been on the list once. We will 

have to offer that choice to parents again next year. 

Mr. TIERNEY. You must put that choice out to them even though 

you have some serious reservations? 

Ms. SWANSON. Correct. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Is the State monitoring their performance or is the 

school system monitoring their performance? 

Ms. SWANSON. We are. And, again, we have been advised that it 

shouldn’t be our role. Obviously, we need to look at it, but it is the 

State’s role to really monitor and evaluate and judge the effectiveness. That hasn’t been happening in Illinois, so the local school district has stepped up into that position. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Do you know whether or not the State of Illinois 

has any system set up to allow that to happen? 

Ms. SWANSON. They are working to do that. They have spoken 

briefly with Louisiana to look at their Web-based monitoring system. CPS is currently contracting and designing a similar Webbased system. Perhaps the State could end up using that one. But, 

right now, we are going to keep moving forward in trying to see 

what accountability measures we can add to this. 

51

Mr. TIERNEY. There was some mention of some of the for-profits 

that are providing these services actually hiring Chicago teachers, 

teachers from the same system. Are these teachers in the same system that were found not be performing? 

Ms. SWANSON. Correct. 

Mr. TIERNEY. What is your district’s opinion of that? 

Ms. SWANSON. I think there is an understanding there is a new 

cadre of people coming in after school and tutoring, and that is indeed not happening. Our largest provider, admittedly 90 percent of 

their staff are CPS teachers. Effectively, they are hiring our teachers and using our schools with very similar materials to what we 

are using in school. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Is there a pay differential for what they are getting 

paid for at the school as opposed to what they get paid during 

school? 

Ms. SWANSON. If they are working for the school district, we are 

bound by union contract to pay them their hourly rate. If they are 

working for a private company, they can set the salary. Most of the 

private providers raise it to the rate, the regular rate, simply 

knowing that that is what teachers will work for. They have been 

pretty much equivalent. 

Mr. TIERNEY. It has been too early to evaluate the performance 

of those individuals? 

Ms. SWANSON. Yes. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Let me ask you about the tuition-based after school 

program. We have a lot of after school programs, unfortunately, 

with long waiting lists because some of the funding has been cut 

back on that, but there has been tremendous success in my district. 

How are you running your tuition-based program? How do you 

charge and who gets qualified to participate? 

Ms. SWANSON. We actually piloted that program in 10 schools 

this past year. It really came from parents. Parents approached the 

school district and—typically our middle-class communities and 

said we can afford to pay some fees for after school. We have a 

strong tuition-based prepaid program and other things, and we 

modeled it off of that. There is a sliding fee scale for parents, depending on what they can pay for the program. It is 2 to 6 p.m., 

5 days a week. Some do Saturday programming and summer programming as well. We have one school that does tuition-based program throughout the entire summer. So parents can pay whatever 

fee that they can pay, and there are discounts for siblings and 

whatever. I can provide more information. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Are you running this right across the district or 

only in schools that are upper income that can afford the tuition? 

Ms. SWANSON. We allowed any school in the district to apply to 

become a part of the program, and there are 10 schools that parents—that very much wanted the program to be implemented. We 

are going to expand to another 10, hopefully, each year. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Does it appear to you that they are some of the 

wealthier communities? 

Ms. SWANSON. More of middle-class neighborhoods, absolutely. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Is there any money other than the tuition money 

paid for these programs or where does that come from? 

52

Ms. SWANSON. The idea is to make itself sustaining. We give a 

seed grant from my office of $50,000 to help hire a part-time coordinator. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Where did you get that money? 

Ms. SWANSON. Local tax dollars. The idea would be with the revenue generated it becomes self-sustaining at the school so it would 

be no longer relying on Title I or district funds. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Did you have similar programs under the 21st century program for nonprofits and others who provided the after 

school programs? Do you have them or have you had them in the 

past? 

Ms. SWANSON. Absolutely. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Do you find that to be successful? 

Ms. SWANSON. Absolutely. Last year, 76 percent of our community schools—we call them extensive parent family engagement—

showed increased test scores as well as our 21st century sites 

showed increased test scores on both assessments. 

Mr. TIERNEY. How are you doing in capacity? 

Ms. SWANSON. All of the money we leveraged gets to about 

200,000 kids, about 46 percent of our population. We have a long 

way to go. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. [Presiding.] Thank you. 

I would yield myself 5 minutes; and I, too, apologize. I was on 

the House floor. 

Ms. Swanson, I am glad you are here to represent the Chicago 

public schools. I have a list from the SES that the district of Chicago—that you are currently serving 83,357 students out of 

200,000 that are eligible? 

Ms. SWANSON. Yes. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Los Angeles is serving 32,000 students out of 

230,000 that are eligible, and New York is serving 60,000 out of 

240,000 eligible. I guess my question is, what is happening to these 

students who are eligible and not receiving these services? 

Ms. SWANSON. Specifically in Chicago, we are hoping to get them 

first into other after school programs if possible. We were able to 

only stretch the money that far to 80,000 students. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Well, it seems a shame for all of these schools 

that are in need, obviously. But your $53 million and Los Angeles 

$50 million and New York is $96 million. So, obviously, these are 

very important programs that our students aren’t getting. 

It was my understanding that in negotiations with the Department of Education that you had to say that you would not use summer school, is that correct? In other words, you were going to use 

the money for the providers in the after school program, but then 

you would need to have different funds for summer school than you 

would have seen as a grant? 

Ms. SWANSON. Yes. We had offered as well as possible to extend 

SES into the summer as well, and we have been advised that we 

can’t do that either. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. You can’t do summer programs? 

Ms. SWANSON. We have to do it through local taxpayer dollars. 

53

Mrs. BIGGERT. Is SES to provide summer school for school districts? 

Ms. SWANSON. That is out of school time. That would include 

summer school. But we are being advised that that can’t happen. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Do you find that if students don’t keep up in the 

summer, they fall back? 

Ms. SWANSON. Absolutely. In fact, that is the judge of whether 

students advance in certain grades as well. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. You might even have more of it by the time you 

come back in the fall. 

Ms. SWANSON. Correct. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Any of you others have that problem? Are you 

funding for summer school as well? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. We have a rich array of after school and summer school programs funded by our legislature. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. By the State? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. Right. And we have Federal TANF dollar 

funds. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. So many times when I go back to my district I 

hear from schools and they say, we can’t do foreign language, we 

can’t do enrichment programs, we can’t do gifted because we are 

teaching to the test. How closely is the academic curriculum or the 

tutoring program aligned with the curriculum to the schools or the 

teachers? 

Maybe I start with you? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. We do require that there is an alignment, and 

the provider has to show a very strong alignment with the school 

district. We have grade level equivalence and State standards. 

They have to also show that—do they teach to the test? Well, I 

think that if they teach to the standards, they are, in fact, teaching 

to the test. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Sometime it is negative when they say teaching 

to the test. And yet, if they are learning the material——

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. Exactly. 

Here is an observation. Our attendance rate drops after the State 

tests are administered. So maybe that is just an observation. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Teasley? 

Mr. TEASLEY. We don’t teach to the district’s curriculum. We 

teach our curriculum which is aligned with the State standards, 

and we are focused on math and reading. That is all SES is supposed to be focusing on. So that is what we do. 

Mr. COHEN. Similar answer. We teach the skill; and, as in Louisiana and every other State, we show how the skills we teach to 

are aligned to the State education standards. And if, indeed, those 

State education standards are aligned to the State test, then you 

have got a match and hopefully the skill attainment that our students receive will be evidenced on the State test. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Do you think you have had to give up other curriculum that you would like, such as the gifted program or——

Mr. COHEN. We are a provider, so—we are actually a provider, 

so we focus more on academic skills. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. Ms. Swanson. 

Ms. SWANSON. When we were an SES provider, we were totally 

aligned with not only our State but our own city standards and 

54

specifically our new math and reading initiatives. We were trying 

to align what was happening during the day with the out-of-school 

time as well. 

Mrs. BIGGERT. My time has expired. 

The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Davis. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman; 

and I am delighted I had the chance to get back. 

I wanted to thank the chairman for having this hearing and for 

assembling this panel of expert witnesses and, also, especially, for 

asking Ms. Swanson from the Chicago public school system to come 

and testify, a system that I have been very close to for a number 

of years, having taught in it for 6 years during the early phases 

of my adult life, having been married to a woman who has taught 

in it for 30 years, and having a sister who just retired as a principal and a sister-in-law that has taught in it for 35 years and a 

host of friends that have done everything you could possibly do in 

it. 

Thank you all for your testimony. I wish I could say I am excited 

about the supplemental program, but I am really not. I am not excited about it because its seems to me that too much of the control 

is taken away from local school districts. 

Ever since I have been associated with education or concerned 

about education, I have always been a strong proponent of what I 

call local control of schools. I have always been a strong proponent 

of what I call parental involvement and participation. And I guess 

what I really don’t understand, what is the role of local school districts in the implementation of the supplemental program? 

Ms. SWANSON. We understand the guidance to be that we are to 

help get the choices out to parents, help recruit kids, get parents 

to make informed choices and help them select tutors and then, obviously, monitor to an extent what is happening in the classrooms. 

I am not sure it goes much beyond that. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Anyone else? 

Mr. TEASLEY. In Indiana, what the school districts have done regarding SES is inform the parents and invite them to parent nights 

and sent out mailers telling the families that are qualified for the 

services that these are the services you can choose from. The district has also entered agreements—purchase order agreements 

with the service provider. 

Now we may have entered an agreement. I believe it was around 

$200,000 of services that we were supposed to provide to the district. The district wanted into that. And that is, of course, if we met 

100 percent of the students and their needs that we were contracted to do. 

It is not compulsory education, so we don’t necessarily have all 

the students that we signed up to serve. They come on their own 

free will. So we don’t get the $200,000. But on the district side it 

is seen as a line as a cost of $200,000. I don’t know how they are 

rectifying it at the end of the day, but that is what I see from my 

perspective. 

In Gary, a little different scenario. They actually had the family 

fair nights in the fall, and they started the SES programs just in 

January. So there is actually a 2- or 3-month lag time between the 

fair night, here is an opportunity, and then the services coming 3 

55

months later. We have actually seen a huge drop-off from the interest that was generated from fair night to the January sign-up time. 

And I sure do wish we had the State test to follow at the end 

of our services, because we don’t. In Indiana, we provide our State 

standard test in the fall. Three weeks after school opens, we all 

take this test. I assume in other States they are taking the State 

standardized tests in the spring, which might indeed drive the SES 

program and the attendance in those States, because it certainly 

will improve those test scores. 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. In Louisiana, we developed a tool kit for districts to help them implement SES. It has sample contracts, sample 

letters out to parents, a whole array of things that districts need 

to do to implement SES. 

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I guess part of my frustration is that I 

am absolutely convinced that the best way to improve reading 

scores and math scores and school achievement, especially in lowincome communities, is to convince the community that education 

is a priority, that education is, in fact, the key. And that if people 

buy into the concept, then they will provide much of the motivation, they will provide much of the environment, and they will do 

what is necessary to help children buy into education as something 

that they really need to adhere to. 

I mean, I just finished, I guess, doing what we call a suspension 

bill; and we were talking about the Indian community and how the 

Asian community in this country, of course, has a higher level of 

economics in terms of median family income, of education. Eightyseven percent of that population group finishes high school, and 60 

percent goes to college. But it is sort of something that is built into 

the culture of the group. 

And I think that, while we can do the top down, you better do 

this, you better do that, if you don’t, you are going to be punished, 

I think the people are already punished. I think they are punished 

when they are low achievers, and I think they are punished already, and I am not sure it is going to get the scores up as effectively. 

I see my time is up, but let me thank you all for your testimony 

and for your expertise and the great work that you do. I think that 

educators are the salt of the earth, pillars of the universe, and I 

appreciate you being here. 

Chairman BOEHNER. [Presiding.] The Chair recognizes the 

gentlelady from California for 5 minutes, Mrs. Davis. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank you all as well. You have been here about twoand-a-half hours, and we have been coming in and out and appreciate your patience with this. 

I wanted to ask you a few questions. I think at the heart of what 

we are talking about here today is how to best write and implement legislation that helps kids. Part of my question is whether or 

not, you know, we got this right, and part of it is in terms of the 

sequencing. At what point after students have not been achieving 

do you develop a program that really supports them through the 

supplemental services? You know, should it have been at the front 

end, rather than the back end? We all know we would hope that 

we would have more services for students. 

56

I am reminded of a program started in San Diego that you may 

be familiar with that is called AVID, Advancement Via Individual 

Determination. The whole core of that program is to particularly 

reach middle school students and high school with college tutors in 

a very supportive atmosphere. And the results of that are extraordinary because, what, 89 percent of kids who would never have 

gone to college have in fact gone to college because of that program. 

It is built in not waiting until after students have not been doing 

particularly well, but support is built in earlier. 

What I wanted to ask you about is the timing of the data collection to determine if a program is successful. Do you have a sense 

that you would feel comfortable in the context—you have been 

working and your data is reliable—when it is 3 years out from the 

beginning? 5 years? At what point should we say we know whether 

or not this has been helpful? 

Mr. TEASLEY. I will take a stab at it from a parent’s perspective 

and be real simple about it. I don’t think it is too early to evaluate 

this. I think a child sits down in a program for 1 hour, what is 

going to be the result at the end of that hour? And our program, 

we can tell you what the result is. We can’t tell you what it will 

be before the hour, but we can tell you what the result was and 

what the student did in that hour and if it was productive and if 

the student didn’t do anything. 

I don’t think it is too early to evaluate this program. You have 

the number of students in schools in the States and districts, and 

they say they know how many students are in these programs. OK, 

what are they learning? How many hours? How many students are 

in the program? How many teachers are in the program? Tell us 

about the teachers. Are they certified? Tell us about the programs. 

Are they using computer-based programs? 

I don’t think it is too early to evaluate this program. I think you 

can do it. 

Mr. COHEN. Let me add to that, I think you can do it. What we 

have suggested is that there is a system that we can put in place 

in terms of validating that the providers have done what they said 

they are going to do. Every provider in at least most State applications has to detail how they are going to make marked improvement with a student. So the question is, how do you come back 

after the program and ask the question, did they do what they said 

they would do in their application? 

We pre- and post-test every student, and we painstakingly detail 

how we deliver our curriculum. Whether it is the State or a third 

party could come in and watch—do a site visit, do an audit, do surveys with parents, with kids, with teachers, with principals and 

say, did they do all these things and then, on top of that, deliver 

to us your pre- and post-test results. 

I think the larger question is, how do you relate that to what is 

happening on State tests? The question we haven’t answered is, 

how much gain are we supposed to see on the State tests? 

I can show you—as Mr. Teasley said, I can show you now the 

pre- and post-test gains that children in our programs are getting. 

The question is, how do you evaluate that in a broader context of 

the pressure to see gains on State-standardized tests? Is a seventh 

grader who is reading at a second grade level, are they supposed 

57

to go to the third grade or catch up to the seventh grade after only 

30 hours of tutoring? 

Those are questions that haven’t been answered yet. There is a 

void in terms of how do we define success in these programs. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. And part of the problem is that we 

didn’t define where that assessment would come from either, am I 

correct? You are saying that the State really doesn’t evaluate. The 

programs themselves have been doing the evaluation. 

Mr. COHEN. But they could. 

I just want to echo something Chairman Boehner said. We are 

only in our second full year of implementation; and the States, at 

least our experience in working with the States, are very serious 

about building the resources, building the capacity to do the types 

of evaluations that we expect. 

I had the honor to be invited to a seminar with all the State representatives that the Department of Education hosted, and the 

whole point of that conversation was to help the States understand 

what their responsibility is in monitoring this. 

So I think this is an evolution. We haven’t gotten all the way 

there yet, but it is too early to determine and say it hasn’t worked. 

Ms. SWANSON. To add, I think we do need, as Mr. Teasley said, 

to start looking at this now and evaluating it. We have been collecting data all year in the Chicago public school system. We have 

far more eligible kids than we have money. We want to make sure 

the money is used well and the highest quality programs they can 

get. 

You know, I think we heard things about that, eventually, yes, 

in a true market, this would play out, but that could take years 

for the sort of few quality providers to really rise to the top. And 

we are talking about kids. I don’t think we should wait 3 years and 

have them flounder in mediocre programs necessarily. I think we 

should, you know, evaluate now and make some decisions. 

Mr. COHEN. I think that is right, but the patience—and I alluded 

to this in my testimony. It has been 40 years since Title I has been 

enacted. We have spent $175 billion in Title I. Last year, we spent 

$200 million on supplemental services, 2 percent of the yearly Title 

I, half or more than half of which is controlled by the district. Because something that wasn’t discussed here today, most children 

are in district-run programs across the country, not in private-provider programs. So, relatively speaking, given the $175 billion we 

spend and the achievement gap we currently have, this experiment 

seems certainly we should give it more than the 2 years we have 

given it to see if it takes hold when—given this new choice, an element of selection to parents who never had that before. 

Mrs. DAVIS OF CALIFORNIA. I appreciate that. And I think, Mr. 

Chairman, you mentioned there will be more money flowing and 

the concern would be whether or not enough communities have the 

capacity to respond with qualified people to be part of the program. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Let me thank our witnesses and remind my 

colleagues and others why we have supplemental services in No 

Child Left Behind. The whole idea was, if you had a school that 

was in need of improvement, there had to be some safety valve for 

those children that were stuck in one of those schools to have an 

58

opportunity to get a chance of a decent education. And that is how 

we looked at it, as a safety valve. 

Mr. Davis, I couldn’t agree more with you that I would hope that 

no child would not be eligible for supplemental services, because 

those activities are being done, you know, in the regular classroom. 

I think what is going to happen as we look down the road 5 years, 

10 years, schools are going to develop new strategies for how to intervene and how to deal with at-risk children. 

But I find this debate about accountability of the supplemental service provider is rather interesting because for 30 years and $175 

billion that we gave to our public schools we never asked them to 

do anything, never asked them to be accountable once; and now, 3 

years, we are asking for more accountability in our schools. 

While this supplemental service—supplemental service providers, 

some States are doing a better job than others, it is pretty clear. 

Hopefully, the other States will increase their accountability assistance. 

But I do have one question. Now, Mr. Teasley and Mr. Cohen, 

you are both, I will say, in the industry; and, Mr. Cohen, I am familiar with your former firm. My daughter was a student at Sylvan 

at one time, so I have some familiarity with your techniques. But 

I guess my question is, why don’t we see more school systems 

adopting more unique techniques and strategies for teaching children, especially at-risk children? 

I know it might be hard for you to answer because you work with 

a lot of schools, but——

Mr. COHEN. Actually, we see quite a few school systems and 

schools adopting the types of techniques. We are talking about supplemental services programs are not classroom instruction programs. They are very different, and they are not meant to be what 

happens in the classroom during the day. We see this as extra, as 

supplemental. 

We, again, prior to No Child Left Behind had worked with quite 

literally hundreds of school districts across the country providing 

these types of services, and many of our colleagues in the industry 

do the same thing, bringing our what I would call narrow expertise 

in this one area of providing educational service to partners in 

schools and school districts and saying we can work together to address the needs of children who have major skill gaps. So, I mean, 

we saw supplemental services when it was enacted merely as an 

affirmation of all those programs that had been going on in hundreds and thousands of schools across the country. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Mr. Teasley. 

Mr. TEASLEY. I have enjoyed listening to Mr. Cohen all day, and 

this is probably the only part where I have to disagree with him. 

He has a different perspective, that this is something extra. For us, 

it is actually what we see what should be going on during the day. 

We are a charter school provider and sponsor, and our math and 

our reading program that we use during the day at our school is 

the same program we use in the after school for the other kids not 

from our school. They are from the district. So we would hope that 

schools throughout the country will look at what is perceived as 

perhaps extra and do it during the day in the classroom, quite 

frankly. 

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I see some of my friends from the Department of Education here 

who were with me when I went to Gary last year. They were raving about a couple of after school tutoring programs; and they actually said, we sure wish we could do this during the day. I said, why 

not? They said, the district. Well, then change it. You are the district. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Mr. Cohen, I understand your business is 

providing supplemental services, but the fact that you have to provide supplemental services kind of accepts an indictment of the 

strategy that goes on during the day. 

Mr. COHEN. I actually respectfully disagree. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Go ahead. I am trying to understand. 

Mr. COHEN. The supplemental services we provide are very targeted programs, typically, as I said, six students to one teacher, 

maybe 30, maybe 40, maybe 50 hours, but precisely trying to address skill gaps that we have assessed prior to the program. We 

run every student through an assessment. The burden you would 

place on public schools to try to accomplish that is really quite 

unfathomable. 

Chairman BOEHNER. It would be a burden under today’s strategy 

for educating children. Now my point is that why wouldn’t schools 

and schools of education begin to look at a strategy of identifying 

those gaps early on, often during the regular curriculum, during 

the school day? 

Mr. COHEN. I agree with that comment, absolutely; and I think 

you are seeing that happen. In other words, if you look across 

school districts and the curriculum or the curricula they are adopting, there is much more of what you are suggesting reflected: assessment at an individual level, more mid-course correction with 

respect to the delivery of the educational curriculum to address 

specific individual needs. We feel we are headed in that direction. 

We are probably not getting there fast enough. But I think that the 

education reform you see out in the school districts reflects the 

comment that you made. 

Mr. TEASLEY. Mr. Chairman, I don’t know if it is a different curricula as it is just different styles of teaching. He has a very different style of teaching than we do. He just mentioned six to one, 

and we have 10 to one. We also have computers. I don’t know what 

he has. We have to take into account that we have all different 

kinds of kids coming to us, and we have to provide different styles 

of teaching, and I would like to see us incorporate that during the 

day. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Ms. Swanson, Ms. Nola-Ganey, do you have 

anything to add? 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. I think we are doing those things as the school 

district. We are doing our math and reading initiatives. We do ongoing assessments now and relatively new initiatives in the district 

the last few years. But we are employing the same strategies and 

trying to be innovative in the classroom as well as outside the 

classroom. 

The burden is on the school strict to take down barriers to learning. We provide a number of health programs, social services, counselors. As Mr. Teasley talked about the school system he works in, 

we are doing those as well and then looking at our instruction. 

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Chairman BOEHNER. According to my good friend, Mr. Miller, 

who visited the Chicago public school systems last month or so, I 

guess, he told me that about half of your elementary schools are 

really doing well and the other half you are continuing to work on. 

Most urban districts would be thrilled to have such a record at this 

point. 

Ms. NOLA-GANEY. I have to agree with Ms. Swanson. We are 

doing that. 

I will use our Reading First program as an example. I think we 

have a long way to go, especially with staff development for our 

teachers, but I think we are headed in that direction; and I am encouraged. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Well, I want to thank everyone for their patience. 

Hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:15 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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