Posted on 03/28/2005 9:58:01 PM PST by jb6
The failure of some American students to master math is adding up to big bucks for tutoring companies in India.
A little-known provision in the federal No Child Left Behind law allows federal taxpayer dollars to flow to online tutoring services several time zones away in places such as New Delhi and Calcutta. Those services typically contract with U.S. tutoring companies, which provide them the computer software and set the lesson plan.
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Few would begrudge using public money to give struggling students extra help. But some U.S. teachers decry the offering of instruction to Indian firms that pay full-time, college-educated tutors as little as $230 a month. They also complain that while the law requires teachers to be fully certified, private tutors have no such requirement.
"We are seeing teachers being laid off," said Nancy Van Meter of the American Federation of Teachers. "Given that situation, it's hard to understand why our tax dollars are being used to create jobs overseas."
The Indian tutoring companies say they are simply filling a market void by providing after-hours services with which some U.S. teachers don't want to be bothered, said Anirudh Phadke, an official with New Delhi-based Career Launcher. The firm, which also serves students in the Middle East, tutors about 1,500 American students in math alone.
"We have a lot of good teachers over here willing to do this full time," Phadke said during a telephone interview. "It's a good opportunity."
Because well-known online tutoring services, such as Sylvan Online, subcontract with firms such as Career Launcher, it's hard to say how many students are spending their money on Indian tutors.
I am in favor of this type of outsourcing.
Indians are well educated, great at math, and good teachers.
If they can do it far more cheaply and effectively, why not.
Arbitrarily forbidding this would only hurt our children.
If it strikes some fear into the teachers unions, perhaps that is healthy.
We're in trouble when our competition is not only teaching us math, but they're doing it in a second language to them.
And it's tax monies that are paying for this!
Why not outsource Teaching (why should any of those jobs remain safe), now if we could only find away to outsource Lawyers and Judges (they’d never let it happen), that would be grand.
There are definately no extra math teachers in the US. Testing shows that many teachers can't do the math much less teach it.
I think you're right. When I took Calculus in college, I was really pleased at first because I had a teaching assistant who was American. Turned out she was a blithering idiot. I ended up seeking out the TA from Madagascar. His English wasn't great, but he sure knew his math.
Actually a lot of law work is outsourced, as are clerks, accountants, x-ray technicians and economists. There are even talks of flying heart patients to beautiful, healthy and disease free India for major surgery. What joy and all we need to do is continue to print debt till the whole thing collapses.
My homeschooled son (16, Calculus) is a math tutor for some Jr/Sr boys from the public high school. The curriculum they use in the public schools is a big problem. If they used the Saxon series, U.S. kids would be ready to re-take the world lead in math in less than 20 years.
Biggest problem in education today is the destruction of the American family, not the teachers.
I am in favor of this outsourcing as well. Its obvious our own teachers and public teaching system are incompetent. So as I like to say if you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. If the teachers union can't teach, its time for them to get out of the way.
"Another contributing factor is the time spent during elementary school learning about Heather's Two Mommies, Malcolm X, environmentalism, tsunami victims' need of temporary shelter, english as a second language, Islam, the good of wealth redistribution, etc. to actually LEARN something useful."
Lol very true, and the good of abortions as children enslave women in the male dominated capitalist system.
college-educated tutors as little as $230 a month.
Ah, yes, India - helping lower the entire wage structure. Ultimately, those who crow with delight as other Americans are injured will get to share the experience.
The point isn't that Indians will live a modern life, the point is Americans are denied jobs in America with their own tax payers monies. This in turn lowers tax revenues which raises our taxes and in the long run, causes us to buy less of everything including Indian/Chinese goods/services. Short term greed to grab a huge portion of the US market will lead to long term disaster for everyone.
I think blaming the parents is bogus for two reasons. First, in my own teaching career I never ran into parents who did not want the best for their children. In fact, I am convinced that they make the best judges of what their children need. Second, public education in the US was built on a model developed in New York city with immigrant children whose parents were poor, ignorant, and didn't speak the language. Those schools taught the children everything about being American including English, hygine, manners, and how to tie their shoes. Today teachers make excuses, but testing is getting them to do their jobs because they do not want to be embarassed.
LOL, we'd get our kids taught well in exchange for garbage.
win-win!
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