JPS Tutoring Flaws Not Unique

Ward Schaefer

Gray & Associates owner Juan Gray said that his company does not overbill and actually tutors more students than it claims on invoices.

by Ward Schaefer
July 29, 2009

The troubles of a federally funded tutoring program in Jackson Public Schools have a precedent in other states. The program, known as Supplemental Educational Services, promises to boost students at failing schools by paying private companies for after-school help. While some research supports the program's effectiveness, nationally, the program has also been plagued by incidents of fraud and criticism that it does not reach enough students.

In Jackson Public Schools, the program earned a stern citation from the Mississippi Department of Education for the 2007-2008 school year. JPS failed to ensure that tutoring companies only billed for eligible students, the state reported in a document obtained by the Jackson Free Press. An investigation by the JFP revealed last week that one tutoring company, Jackson-based Gray & Associates, may have overbilled the district by more than $100,000 during 2007-2008. District reports submitted to MDE show the company charged JPS more than $1.3 million for tutoring 1,060 students. At three of the seven middle schools Gray & Associates served, the company charged more than it legally could, given the enrollment numbers on the district reports.

In other school districts, owners of tutoring companies have been arrested for far smaller discrepancies than the one indicated by Gray's payment from JPS. On June 3, 2009, police in Philadelphia, Pa., arrested Caroline Brooker McGrath for overbilling the city's schools by $18,801 in services her tutoring company never provided. Another business owner, Keith Mackey, pleaded guilty in April 2007 to a felony after over-charging the district $15,785. Since 2004, four owners of tutoring companies have been arrested for improperly obtaining SES funds from Philadelphia, Pa., schools.

The SES program has had a rocky history in Georgia, too. Since 2004, the state Department of Education has removed six companies from its list of approved SES providers for various improprieties.

In January 2007, the state removed a company for paying students $5 to forge their parents' signatures on selection forms and attendance sheets.

Gray, who is also the Terry police chief, dismissed the discrepancies in the JPS data without disputing them outright. His company typically serves more students than it bills for, he says.

"We served way more than the number that we actually quoted them for," Gray told the Jackson Free Press. "So there was never any misappropriation of funds."

Gray emphasized that his company was remarkable for staying with students even after it had billed JPS for the $1,242 maximum allotted per pupil. "It's not about the money," Gray said. "It's about the kids."

Albert Wilson, who owns Genesis & Light, another tutoring provider for JPS, said tutoring a student after the district's payments runs out is not entirely exceptional. "Once that amount was reached, if we continued tutoring that child, it would be pretty much free, because the district had paid all they had to pay into it," Wilson said. "With our program, we did end up tutoring kids free after those funds had been depleted."

To Wilson, whose com-pany tutored only 96 JPS students in 2007-2008, the biggest flaw in the SES program is its limited reach. Of the 7,433 students in Jackson who were eligible for tutoring in 2007-2008, only 1,455—roughly 20 percent—received services, according to district reports. Federal law restricts tutoring companies from directly soliciting business from parents except at a yearly vendor fair. But Wilson said that communication was only part of the problem.

"A lot of times, it's not about getting the word out," Wilson said. "We've got a lot other things they're competing against. Especially in the high schools, they're competing against extracurricular activities."

Whatever the reason, JPS' low participation rate is typical of districts across the country. A 2007 study by the RAND Corporation of nine urban school districts showed that Supplemental Educational Services had a significant, positive impact on students' test scores, but few qualified students took advantage of the program. Only 12 percent of eligible students in those nine districts participated in SES, even lower than the national average of 19 percent.

Wilson places the blame for Jackson's low participation rate on several parties: vendors, schools, students and parents. But JPS parents, at least, may not have received all the rights granted to them under the SES program. The Jackson Free Press has obtained parental selection forms for the 2007-2008 school year that show "Gray & Associates" typed on a line as a suggested "first choice" for SES provider. The form should be blank so that parents can select and fill in a desired tutoring provider.

Gray said state officials began insisting that parents select tutoring companies themselves only in the middle of the 2007-2008 school year. Wilson disputes that, however.

"A parent always picked the vendor," Wilson said, adding, "The schools, to the best of my knowledge, never were allowed to pick a vendor."

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