NCLB Public School Choice and Supplemental Educational Services: Outcomes
Posted April 01, 2011
Supplemental Educational Services:
Compared to public school choice under NCLB, there has been far more research and evaluation done on the impact of SES. In addition, there are numerous state evaluations that annually measure the impact of individual SES providers. Yet there is a lack of consensus on the extent to which SES has been effective in raising student achievement. In part, this is due to clear differences in implementation of SES from the state level all the way down to the provider level, with some clearly doing a better job than others.
As with nearly any federal program, SES is not always the same everywhere; there are different providers offering varying kinds of services to different-sized groups of children for varied numbers of hours. Models vary from computer-based instruction to one-on-one tutoring. With so many variables, researchers have yet to undertake more sophisticated research to answer not only the question of whether or not SES helps raise student academic achievement, but which kinds of SES are best to offer and under what conditions do they provide the best results.
However, there are reasons to be optimistic when it comes to SES outcomes.
A recent evaluation by researchers from Vanderbilt University and the RAND Corporation found “significant and positive effects of SES on student test scores in mathematics.” For students receiving two or more years of SES tutoring, the report found “significant cumulative impact on test score gains in both mathematics and reading.” (Springer, M.G., Pepper, M.J., Ghosh-Dastidar, B. (2009) Supplemental Educational Services and Student Test Score Gains: Evidence from a Large, Urban School District.)
Similarly, a major RAND Corporation report released by the U.S. Department of Education in January 2009 indicated that in an evaluation of the effects of SES in seven school districts nationwide from 2002 to 2005, student participants experienced gains in achievement in both reading and mathematics which were greater than the gains for nonparticipating students. “On average, across seven districts, participation in supplemental educational services had a statistically significant, positive effect on students’ achievement in reading and math. Students participating for multiple years experienced larger gains.” (U.S. Department of Education, www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/choice/nclb-choice-ses-final/index.html)
As more states have conducted evaluations, many have found small yet positive effects of SES. Chicago Public Schools (CPS), a district that for many years fully embraced SES, specifically found that SES participants showed a 5% greater reading gain and a 13.2% greater math gain than would have been expected had they not participated in SES. The study also concluded that student achievement in math was directly affected by the number of hours of SES instruction, and that SES-served students with disabilities achieved more significant gains in reading and math than students without disabilities. (Chicago Public Schools, Office of Research, Evaluation and Accountability, “The 2007 Supplemental Educational Services Program: Year Four Summative Evaluation,” https://research.cps.k12.il.us/resweb/pe)
These results echo an earlier CPS study in 2005, which found that SES programs were most helpful for those students who were farthest behind in reading and math. According to the CPS report, the federally funded tutoring “seemed to have helped students catch up to their peers in terms of gains on the Illinois Test of Basic Skills in both math and reading.”
Similarly, positive results were found in Portland, Oregon, where a 2010 audit found that the average achievement gains for the district’s 435 students who participated in SES during the 2008-2009 school year were slightly larger than the gains of students who didn’t participate in the tutoring. The report went on to say, “when students spent 20 hours or more in SES tutoring, they scored significantly higher than their non-tutored peers on the following year’s achievement tests.” In 2009, that meant that 60% of students receiving tutoring met academic benchmarks, compared to just 24% of students who did not participate in tutoring. (Portland Public Schools, “Supplemental Educational Services: Overall Compliance with Requirements but Opportunities Exist to Improve Effectiveness.” www.pps.k12.or.us/files/board/audit_published_february_2010.pdf)
Yet results vary markedly by location, a fact that has yet to be examined nationally. For example, Los Angeles Unified School District found in 2007 that SES participation led to a “statistically higher, yet substantively negligible performance gain” on the California Standards Test. Gains were greatest among students with high SES attendance records, and were most pronounced among elementary school students. (“LAUSD Report #352, “The Impact of Supplemental Educational Services Participation on Student Achievement 2005-2006,” by the Los Angeles United School District Program Evaluation and Research Branch. http://notebook.lausd.net/portal/page?_pageid=33,102413&_dad=ptl&_schema=PTL_EP)