WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) -- The Bush administration says it again will bend the rules of the No Child Left Behind law, intending to get thousands more poor children into tutoring.
The Education Department said Wednesday it would expand two experiments that early signs indicate have helped more children get into tutoring. The step is an attempt to address a major snag under the 2002 law.
Only 10 percent to 20 percent of the more than 1 million poor children eligible for tutoring have signed up. That is considered a dismal rate of participation.
The policy changes are part of a pattern of enforcement by Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. She wants to show she can adapt -- waiving rules to get more kids in tutoring -- and yet be tough on states that do not comply, by threatening to pull their money.
The law requires schools that get federal poverty aid and fall short of their yearly progress goals for two straight years to offer transfers to students. After three years of failure, schools must offer low-income parents a choice of tutors.
The new policy will let 23 school districts flip that order, offering transfers second.
That is significant because parents prefer tutoring to moving their child to a new school. Six times as many students took part in tutoring compared with school choice in 2003-04.
The districts are in Alaska, Delaware, Indiana, North Carolina and Virginia. Just four Virginia districts were involved when the experiment began last year. Spellings opted to expand it nationwide after seeing signs that it boosted interest in tutoring.
Most states did not bother applying for the flexibility because they did not meet the criteria. The five states that won the department's blessing were the only ones to apply.
They must report on the progress of the students and show increases in enrollment.
The department bent the rules in a second area, too.
Typically, school districts themselves cannot provide tutoring when they have failed to meet their yearly progress goals. Districts say that penalty ends up reducing help for kids.
So Spellings agreed last year to let Boston and Chicago provide tutoring even though they had fallen short of academic standards. The department renewed that offer and extended it to two more districts: Anchorage, Alaska, and Memphis, Tennessee.
"More children will have access to quality tutoring," Deputy Education Secretary Ray Simon said. He said the programs will provide key data on what works and what doesn't.
As a matter of fairness, extending flexibility to more schools makes sense, said Michele McLaughlin, assistant director of educational issues for the American Federation of Teachers.
But the bigger goal is to turn around struggling schools in high-poverty areas. Transfers and tutoring have never been established as ways to do that, McLaughlin said.