Assignment Problem

President Joe Biden’s ambition to flood K-12 schools with tutors and mentors is facing challenges. Billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds for academic programs are running out. And a potentially massive source of classroom help — college kids — is proving tough to tap. The Education Department has asked that higher education institutions pay their students with Federal Work-Study funds to tutor younger kids. But policy wonks agree bureaucratic and logistical hurdles make it tough to scale a novel solution to an urgent problem, almost two years after the White House marshaled a call to do just that.