Effectiveness of Supplemental Educational Services

One of the modifications of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (known as the No Child Left Behind Act) gave parents of low-income students in low-performing schools a choice of Supplemental Educational Services (SEdS). SEdS include tutoring or other academic support services offered outside the regular school day, at no charge to students or their families, by public or private organizations that have been approved by the state. We examine the impacts of SEdS on test scores among 24,000 students in school districts where SEdS were oversubscribed in Florida, Ohio, and Connecticut. Oversubscribed school districts are required to make SEdS available to the lowest achieving students among eligible applicants, creating the opportunity to estimate impacts using a regression discontinuity design, which relies on districts’ use of a continuous measure of prior academic achievement to determine which eligible applicants will be offered services. We find no impact of SEdS on student test scores.