Chicago Schoolchildren Left Behind

This story was written By CBSNews.com's Gina Pace

"The tutoring program did wonders with Titus," Lowe said. "The teacher he had during the day was good but he just wasn't getting it. When he started going to Platform, his grades just shot up."

But a week ago, Titus, 11, came home from school and said he wasn't getting tutoring this year and had been placed on a wait list. His sister, Trounia, 8, however, is.

"It really makes me angry," said Lowe, who does food service work in a nursing home. "Because if he doesn't have the tutoring program, I believe his reading and math scores will go back down and I don't want that to happen at all."

Titus is one of about 17,000 poor children in low-performing Chicago schools that won't be receiving free tutoring this year required by the No Child Left Behind law.

The reason: a bureaucratic mess.

Last year, Chicago Public Schools was told it couldn't provide the tutoring services because it was a failing district and must outsource the tutoring to private companies.

The school district disputed the decision by the federal Department of Education saying they could provide the services for $380 per student. That's much cheaper than what private companies charge, as much as $1,800, said Beth Swanson, the district's director of after-school services.

The district received a waiver by the federal government last month to restart the services; but by then it was too late, Swanson said. Most parents had signed up with private companies, chewing up the federal allocation. Last year, only about half of parents who signed up chose private companies – this year three quarters of parents did.

District officials say it could have been worse. Originally, about 30,000 of the 73,000 children who signed up wouldn't receive services, but the school district kicked in an extra $5 million to enroll some of the students on the waitlist in its own district program.

"It's an absolute shame," said Arne Duncan, Chicago Public Schools chief. "After-school tutoring is a huge part of the reason why we've seen so much progress in our district."

Tutoring services are offered in low-performing schools throughout the country, but Chicago is unusual because they have such a high level of participation, said Patty Sullivan, the director Center on Education Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that monitors No Child Left Behind issues. Only about 18 percent of eligible students sign up for the services nationwide, she said.

For Duncan, the problem comes down to simple math: the school system just doesn't have high overhead costs. A study released this year by the school system shows that the district-provided programs were about in the middle of all providers in Chicago in terms of boosting student achievement on standardized tests. That indicates that the district is competitive with private providers that charge three to four times more, Duncan said.

The Chicago Tribune reported recently that private tutoring firms spend an average of 52 cents of every taxpayer dollar to tutor poor children in Illinois — raising red flags with state education officials. Illinois is the only state that has required tutoring providers to break down their costs and make them available to the public.

"Our goal is to serve every single child," Duncan said. "Money is extraordinarily tight, and it's critically important that every dollar be used wisely. Where that is not happening, you are stealing scarce resources from children who need the most help, and we're not going to let that happen."

Steven Pines, the executive director of the Education Industry Association, a group that represents tutoring companies, defends the cost of private programs, saying they have a lower teacher-to-student ratio, must pay the school district rent to use classrooms, and that they all use different curriculum, affecting costs.

Private providers are upset, he said, because they were not given warning they would lose so many students after they held enrollment.

"They have expended vast sums to recruit teachers, buy instructional materials and organize a program for 80,000 students," Pines said. "Now, we see in many cases, companies will serve 50 percent of kids they hoped to enroll."

School principal Philip Salemi does not care where the tutoring services are coming from; he just wants to make sure that his students get them. His school, James Shields, teaches grades K-8 in a Hispanic neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. More than 200 of the school's students sign up for tutoring services, but after the cuts, only 68 will actually get to go to the classes.

"After school programs benefit our school so much," he said. "A lot of our kids who come to after-school program have families that are working. This develops a consistent, caring relationship with out teachers, a safe place to go, and reinforces everything they learn in a day."

Salemi plans to use grant funding and divert discretionary money that the school could have used for other resources to enroll those children in some sort of after-school program, because he feels it's so critical.

"Every time you have something taken away it's a challenge," he said. "But you try to do your best and work with what you have."

For students like Titus, however, Swanson said there is little hope that any more children will be taken off the wait list and receiving tutoring this year unless students who registered drop out.

His mother, Joan, planned to go to his school to see if he could be enrolled in an alternate program.

"Why did he have to be the one pushed on the waiting list?" she asked. "I tell my children all the time that education is the most important thing. You have to get it while you can."

By Gina Pace