Why are free supplemental services (tutors) tied to whether you can afford to pay for your child's lunch?

My children attend a a middle school that has not achieved Adequate Yearly Progress for four years. We have not thought about transferring them to other schools because we want to be part of the solution. 

We have paid for our son's tutoring since he was in kindergarten. His middle school provides an after school tutoring program. After going through it for a year, we found it was a babysitting service/study hall/homework time, with little or no instruction. It was a waste of time.

Yet free sessions at Sylvan Learning Center are available to children who get a free lunch/free ride. When we contacted Sylvan, they were more concerned with testing our son than telling  us what they have to offer. 

Why should we keep our children in school if we have to pay to have them tutored so they do not lag behind? Before you know it, we will have bad schools consisting of "free lunch" kids.

From Sue:

Free lunch is available to children from low income families because they probably will not get lunch otherwise. Free supplemental educational services are available to these children for the same reason - their families cannot afford tutoring. 

These children became eligible for supplemental educational services when their school failed to teach students to an adequate level.

As to your second question: why should you keep your children in a school where the education is so poor that you need
to supplement it? 

I don't know. 

Would you fly on an airline that failed to meet federal standards? 

Are the school's test scores improving? Have you seen the test scores of other schools in your district? Are other schools in your district no better than those where your children attend now? 

Is there social pressure on parents to be loyal to school personnel? 

My suggestions -

* Make sure your school board is aware of federal requirements.
* Vote for school board members who ARE aware of federal requirements.
* Have your son evaluated by an independent evaluator - follow the evaluator's recommendations about what your son needs from the school. 
* If your son has an IEP, find a local advocate who can accompany you to IEP meetings and keep the IEP team focused on following the evaluator's recommendations.

These links will take you to listings of advocates, attorneys,evaluators, schools, tutors and other resources for children in each state.

Yellow Pages for Kids http://www.fetaweb.com/help/states.htm

IDA

Education A Must > http://www.education-a-must.com/ser.html
http://www.education-a-must.com/aalist.html

Raising and educating children can be very time consuming and expensive, but the opportunity to do it is a great gift.

Sue

Links

Here are links to publications about information that must be available to parents.

Notification and Reporting Requirements for Local School Boards - by National School Boards Association

Using the No Child Left Behind Act to Improve Schools in Your State - A Toolkit for Business Leaders - Information Resources for Business Leadership to Increase Student Achievement under the No Child Left Behind Act of
2001 published by the Business Roundtable

An Action Guide for Community and Parent Leaders - Using NCLB to Improve Student Achievement by Public Education Network

A New Wave of Evidence: The Impact of School, Family and Community Connections on Student Achievement by Southwest Educational Development Laboratory