tutoring

Lauren Caramanica tutored second graders at P.S. 152 in the Bronx in a program that's part of the No Child Left Behind law.






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February 12, 2006
Tutor Program Offered by Law Is Going Unused
By SUSAN SAULNY
Four years after President Bush signed the landmark No Child Left Behind education law, vast numbers of students are not getting the tutoring that the law offers as one of its hallmarks.

In the nation's largest school district, New York City, fewer than half of the 215,000 eligible students sought the free tutoring, according to figures from the city's Department of Education for the school year that ended in June 2005.

In one area of the city, District 19 in eastern Brooklyn, about 3,700 students completed a tutoring program last year, even though more than 13,000 students qualified.

Yet New York's participation rate is better than the national average: across the country, roughly two million public school students were eligible for free tutoring in the school year that ended in 2004, according to the most recent data from the Department of Education, yet only 226,000 — or nearly 12 percent — received help.

In California in the last school year, 95,500 of 800,000 eligible students were tutored. In Maryland, just over a quarter of those who were eligible — 5,580 of 19,520 students — actually enrolled in the last school year. And in Louisiana, despite aggressive marketing by the state, only about 5,000 of 50,000 eligible students took part in the program last year.

The No Child Left Behind law requires consistently failing schools that serve mostly poor children to offer their students a choice if they want it: a new school or tutoring from private companies or other groups, paid for with federal money — typically more than $1,800 a child in big cities. In the past the schools would have been under no obligation to use that Title I federal poverty grant to pay for outside tutoring.

City and state education officials and tutoring company executives disagree on the reasons for the low participation and cast blame on each other. But they agree that the numbers show that states and school districts have not smoothed out the difficulties that have plagued the tutoring — known as the supplemental educational services program — from its start as a novel experiment in educational entrepreneurship: largely private tutoring paid for with federal money.

Officials give multiple reasons for the problems: that the program is allotted too little federal money, is poorly advertised to parents, has too much complicated paperwork for signing up, and that it has not fully penetrated the most difficult neighborhoods, where there are high concentrations of poor, failing students.

"I think there's a real learning curve on this because it's so different from what has come before," said Jane Hannaway, the director of the Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute, which is in the early stage of conducting studies on the tutoring program for the United States Department of Education.

"At this point, policy analysts are trying to figure out what's working well and what may not be working well and what needs to be changed," Ms. Hannaway added.

Because the initiative is but a few years old, and many districts are only now starting tutoring programs, experts say their effort to pinpoint the hurdles to the initiative's success is also suffering from a lack of data.

Even for those students who are getting tutored, there has yet to be a scientific national study judging whether students in failing schools are receiving any academic benefit. And there is no consensus on how that progress should be judged.

In addition, it is not entirely clear why so many students do not complete tutoring programs once they have enrolled. In New York City, 34,055 schoolchildren did not successfully complete the terms of their tutoring contracts last year after signing up. Most seemed to attend a few sessions and then never returned.

Federal education officials point to the fact that the initiative is still relatively new in explaining the low enrollment numbers, and say that participation is growing every year.

"To some extent, when you offer something new to low-income parents or to any parent group, initially you're not going to have a surge signing up because they don't know what it is and the procedure to sign kids up is somewhat complicated," said Nina Rees, an assistant deputy secretary at the Department of Education.

To that end, the department has been advising states and school districts to use everything they can to reach parents, including letters, fliers and the Internet, and to make the description of programs as simple as possible. Still, Ms. Rees noted that "this can be time consuming, and a lot of districts don't have the capacity to administer a program like this while administering all of the other grants they are charged with administering."

While tutoring is only one of the choices given to students under the law, switching to new schools is more difficult, so school districts have put the emphasis on tutoring. In failing districts, the law required the tutoring to come from outside groups on the theory that they could do a better job than the schools that were failing in the first place.

But to address the tens of thousands of students who are not getting tutors, federal education officials are now allowing some failing districts to tutor their own students.

New York was the third city to receive such a waiver in November, after Chicago and Boston. City education officials say they hope running their own program will open access to more students because districts tend to tutor students at a much lower cost per child, and the tutoring groups tend to be larger.

The federal government calls the three city efforts pilot programs and says that based on their success they could be replicated in other cities.

Students are not required to sign up for tutoring. The option is offered, but students' ability to participate depends on how well the services are advertised, how cooperative districts are in letting tutors into schools, whether the tutors can serve all those in need and whether districts have enough money to cover services for those who want them.

The money comes from a percentage of federal Title I money that the districts must set aside for tutoring or the school transfers. But some districts say the money has been insufficient to keep up with demand.

After No Child Left Behind became law, companies and other tutoring groups rushed to be part of the new industry. Eduventures, a market research firm for the education industry, estimated that the amount of money spent on supplemental educational services last year was $879 million and that the figure would grow to $1.3 billion by 2009.

The providers range from large companies like Catapult Learning, Kaplan Inc. and the Princeton Review to smaller community and religions groups and nonprofit organizations. To participate and be reimbursed per child tutored, providers must first win the state's approval. Some tutoring companies blame the school districts and the federal government for the bulk of the problems.

"If this was Year 1 or 2, I'd cut the districts more slack in somehow explaining the lack of aggressive outreach," said Steven Pines, executive director of the Education Industry Association, a trade group that represents businesses like textbook, testing and tutoring companies.

Jeffrey Cohen, the president of Catapult Learning, one of the largest tutoring companies, said participation rates were low because many districts were just now embracing the program, and some still had complicated sign-up procedures.

"From a macro level, there needs to be more enforcement," Mr. Cohen said. "If I can identify for you a school district that has 40,000 eligible children and 245 approved, I draw the conclusion that there is something wrong with the implementation there. In states and districts that have opened their arms to the value of tutoring, you see strong programs and strong participation."

Many state and district officials complain that federal financing is insufficient to meet demand and say that federal officials were also slow in offering advice, contributing to the bumpy start. In Washington, D.C., for instance, about 24,563 students are eligible this year for tutoring. But only 3,025 students are being tutored, because that is all the district says it can afford.

There is only one official to handle everything related to the tutoring for the entire district. "We don't have enough money to accommodate the desire," said Tamika N. Maultsby, a program coordinator for Washington schools. "We are working tirelessly. But we definitely need staff. The kids are signing up. The desire is there. We just don't have the money."

Some educational groups believe that some tutoring companies shun students with learning and language difficulties because the companies are judged based in part on the progress their students make.

Some of the latest available data gives a clear picture that some of the country's vulnerable students are among those not being served: in New York City, for instance, about 9,000 of approximately 22,000 children with disabilities who were eligible for tutoring enrolled for help last year. Among students with limited English, about half the 40,000 eligible were being tutored.

Beth Swanson, the director of after-school and community school programs for the Chicago public schools, said of tutoring companies, "Typically, we do see that providers opt not to serve those populations, and likely because they don't have the materials, expertise or resources to do so."

Many in the tutoring industry deny such charges and say that schools do not notify them in advance about which students might require special services, citing privacy concerns.

In May, in another relaxation of the law that recognized that some disabled children might be contributing to a district's failure rate, the Education Department announced that states could apply for flexibility to allow greater numbers of students to take alternate tests to assess whether they were comprehending material at their own grade level.

Despite the efforts to draw students to tutoring, some students and parents say they are not even aware that they may qualify and express confusion about the free program.

"I need help in a couple of subjects, and I'm interested in anything that would help me," said Ninoska Valverde, a student at Junior High School 291 in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. "It would be a great idea, but I didn't even know about it."



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New Digital Cameras

Despite the advances in videography, there's still this certain quality about the still photo that captures something that a video doesn't. Perhaps that "frozen in time" characteristic of a still photo that a video does not produce (except with the "freeze frame" feature).

The New York Times
February 2, 2006
David Pogue
Pixel Counting Joins Film in Obsolete Bin

IF you work in the camera industry, February is an exciting month. That's when you head down to Florida for the annual Photo Marketing Association convention, where your company will unveil its latest camera models, thus making the ones everybody got for Christmas obsolete.

But this February is more exciting than most. Big changes are in the photographic air.

First, there's the astonishing collapse of the film camera market. By some tallies, 92 percent of all cameras sold are now digital. Big-name camera companies are either exiting the film business ( Kodak, Nikon) or exiting the camera business altogether (Konica Minolta). Film photography is rapidly becoming a special-interest niche.

Next, there's the end of the megapixel race. "In compact cameras, I think that the megapixel race is pretty much over," says Chuck Westfall, director of media for Canon's camera marketing group. "Seven- and eight-megapixel cameras seem to be more than adequate. We can easily go up to a 13-by-19 print and see very, very clear detail."

That's a shocker. After 10 years of hearing how they need more, more, more megapixels, are consumers really expected to believe that eight megapixels will be the end of the line?

Well, we'll see. But if the age of megapixel insecurity is really over, what will motivate us to buy a new camera every couple of years?

NOW, trying to predict the future of technology is a fool's game. But if you study enough trends and interview enough camera company executives, you get some tantalizing ideas of what's in the labs right now. Here's a tour of what you may be seeing in digital cameras, presented in a sequence of more and more distant horizons.

ABANDONING THE FILM LOOK Now that consumers are comfortable with going all digital, camera companies no longer feel compelled to mimic the size, shape and features of film cameras. Today's cameras embrace their electronic nature, taking on more radical looks and talents.

You can see it in Kodak's startling-looking V570 camera, which has two built-in lenses, each with its own sensor (a nonzooming wide-angle lens and a 3X zoom lens). You also see it in Sony's sleek hinged M2 slab, which has so little resemblance to a camera, you have to explain it to people. Canon has displayed prototypes with clear acrylic bodies, giving you a transparent look into the guts.

IMAGE STABILIZERS The hot trend for 2006 is image stabilization. This feature, available in a flood of new camera models, improves your photos' clarity by ironing out your little hand jiggles.

This feature is an enormous help in three situations: When you're zoomed in all the way (which magnifies jitters), in low light (meaning that the shutter stays open a long time, increasing the likelihood of blurring), and when your camera doesn't have an eyepiece viewfinder (forcing you to hold the camera at arm's length, decreasing stability).

CAMCORDER TENDENCIES Only two years ago, still cameras and video cameras were each terrible at doing the other's job. Today, camcorders still take crummy photos, but digital still cameras take increasingly high-quality movies. Almost all current models can record video that fills a standard TV screen (640 by 480 pixels) with TV-quality smoothness (30 frames per second).

Canon, in particular, is pushing the envelope here. Its PowerShot S80 can capture movies larger than TV size (1,024 by 768 pixels), for better viewing on high-definition screens and computer monitors; meanwhile, several cameras in its SD and A series can film at 60 frames per second. That's twice the smoothness of TV, and a great help when analyzing your golf swing or tennis serve. Canon's S2 IS can even film and snap stills simultaneously, thanks to separate shutter and start-stop buttons.

Kodak, Samsung, Canon and Olympus offer cameras that can zoom and refocus while you're filming. Unfortunately, on most models, the grinding noise of the zoom lens motor drowns out your audio track, but progress is being made here, too. Samsung says that the zoom on its Digimax i6 camera, arriving in stores later this month, works silently in movie mode.

WIRELESS The N1 from Nikon and Elph SD430 from Canon both offer Wi-Fi wireless networking. Unfortunately, the only thing those cameras can do is transfer your pictures wirelessly to a computer or printer; they don't connect to the Internet.

The EasyShare-One from Kodak, however, can send your photos by e-mail or post them on a free Kodak Web page — or even go the opposite direction, summoning photos from your online stash to the camera's screen on demand.

SMARTER SOFTWARE A typical digicam takes at least two years to go from the drawing board to the store shelves. Many of the cameras you'll buy in 2007 and 2008, in other words, have already been designed.

They may include global positioning system receivers, so that, as you browse your photos in iPhoto or Picasa, you'll know not only when you took them, but where.

Some of Nikon's CoolPix models already contain face-recognition software, a feature that supposedly assists focus by scanning the scene for human facial features. And Canon is working on even more sophisticated recognition software. One, called Blink Shot, would prevent the camera from taking the picture when your subject's eyes are closed. A companion feature, called Smile Shot, waits to fire until your subject manages a grin.

BETTER BATTERIES Most compact cameras today use lithium-ion cells that, on average, provide 300 shots between charges.

According to Mr. Westfall of Canon, however, the future is hydrogen fuel cells, which will provide far longer-lasting power. "This technology is already in development," he said. "They'll probably make their debut in laptop batteries first, and then make their way into cellphones and digital cameras."

BETTER SCREENS Camera screens are getting better and bigger. Diagonal dimensions of 2 or 2.5 inches are common today; Kodak and Sony each offer 3-inch screens (touch-sensitive ones at that, to reduce buttons on the camera's back), and the new Samsung Digimax Pro 815 packs an industry-leading, absolutely gigantic 3.5-incher. Showing off your photos on this baby is almost like handing around a stack of drugstore prints.

Unfortunately, the bigger the screen, the greater the power drain. The buzz among camera designers these days, therefore, is OLED screens (organic light-emitting diode), which offer much better brightness but much lower power consumption. You can expect to see such screens within the next year.

THE POCKET-SIZE S.L.R. For complex reasons involving lens design and light-sensor dimensions, the photos taken by today's sleek, shirt-pocketable minicams can't touch the quality of scenes captured by digital S.L.R. (single-lens reflex) cameras.

Yet digital S.L.R.'s are big, bulky and heavy. And you can't use the screen to compose your shots, which, on other cameras, is a delicious convenience. You must frame your shots by peering through the eyepiece.

Camera designers are hammering away at this problem, too. The Olympus Evolt 330 S.L.R., announced last week, contains a second sensor that does nothing but feed the scene to the screen. Olympus says that you therefore get the best of both worlds: an interchangeable-lens S.L.R. with a live preview on the screen.

That helps, but even the Evolt is not what you'd call credit card size. Shrinking the camera without losing photo quality may be the most difficult technological challenge of all.

Still, there's hope — in the form of liquid lenses. When an electrical charge is applied to a liquid lens, the droplet changes shape. Apply the charge in just the right way, and you can make the droplet change focus, or even zoom. Although liquid-lens technology is only in its infancy, it could one day replace the huge, heavy discs of glass that weigh down the digital S.L.R.

THE NEXT-GEN CAMERA Paradise is still not in the cards; for one thing, nobody has yet figured out how to store all those digital photos for future generations. It's not clear how long hard drives and home-burned CD's can last, and the software question is even more frightening. Will the under-the-skin nanocomputers of 2100 still recognize JPEG files?

Even so, you have a lot to look forward to: hydrogen-powered shirt-pocket cameras with liquid lenses, four-inch OLED touch screens, G.P.S. features, software that snaps only the best facial expressions and wireless circuitry that beams the result to your friends and fans.

You think February 2006 is exciting? Wait till February 2020.

E-mail: Pogue@nytimes.com
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