A decade after it became law as a part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, a tutoring program heralded as an academic safety net for children from low-income families in struggling schools has earned few champions — and lost many supporters, The New York Times reports. Michael Petrilli, a former Bush administration official who helped develop and promote the initiative during his four years in the federal Education Department. “It was a poorly thought-through policy, and I think it has run its course and should be allowed to die.” Under the No Child Left Behind tutoring program, underperforming schools had to set aside a portion of the federal financing they received for economically disadvantaged students to get outside tutoring. In Texas, with minimal quality control at the state level, it resulted in millions of dollars in public money going to companies that at best showed little evidence of their services’ academic benefit, and at worst committed outright fraud…
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