by KYW's John Ostapkovich
Free is a good price but a federally-funded program of free tutoring in Philadelphia goes begging for customers.
Supplemental Education Services are part of the No Child Left Behind Program. Students from 120 schools listed as failing are offered tutoring by state-approved providers, two sessions a week, an hour and a half to two hours a session, according to Stu Maleeff, whose Huntington Learning Center on City Avenue is one of the providers:
"It's not intended to do homework with the kids. It is intended to help them raise their educational skill levels. Now most of the students that enroll in these programs are coming from failing schools which are generally located in low-income areas."
Student participation in each of the last four years has been less than 2,000 district-wide, no better than four and a half-percent despite information packets in nine languages mailed to parents.
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