Concern is rising in some quarters that the No Child Left Behind Act permits foreign companies to provide federally financed online tutoring to students at underperforming schools. Such arrangements appear to constitute only a minute fraction of the tutoring business that is mushrooming under the federal law. Nine members of Congress asked the Government Accountability Office to examine the practice, along with a host of other implementation issues raised by the law's provisions for supplemental educational services. The law requires school districts to use part of their federal Title I aid for disadvantaged children to pay for tutoring for low-income students whose schools fail to make sufficient academic progress three years in a row. Companies that obtain state approval may then contract with individual districts to offer tutoring. Some of those companies provide services, especially in rural areas, by computer. The American Federation of Teachers believes the practice is at odds with what it considers good-quality tutoring. Programs should be taught by people well-versed in the curriculum and standards in use in the host district, and who are in close enough contact with a child's teachers to align the tutoring to classroom work. The union harbors similar concerns about U.S.-based online tutors, but subcontracting to foreign providers means tutoring is "one more step removed from the classroom." Officials of the U.S. Department of Education refused to take a position on the issue. They acknowledged that neither the law nor regulations for its implementation addresses subcontracting or using foreign companies for tutoring.