Teachers; Losing your job? Do the freakin math!
From the Washington Post 5/15/06
Thousands of U.S. students such as Del Monte are increasingly relying on overseas tutors to boost their grades and SAT scores. The tutors, who communicate with students over the Internet, are inexpensive and available around the clock, making education the newest industry to be outsourced to other countries. Tutoring companies figure: If low-paid workers in China and India can sew your clothes, process your medical bills and answer your computer questions, why can't they teach your children, too?
But educational outsourcing has sparked a fierce response from teachers and other critics who argue that some companies are using unqualified overseas tutors to increase their profit margins.
To 15-year-old Amita Achutuni, though, tutoring on the Internet just makes sense. On a recent Monday afternoon, the Potomac resident kicked off her shoes and logged into her home computer. Then she put on her headset.
"Hi, Amita!" a woman with an Indian accent said cheerfully. "How are you doing?"
The voice belonged to Lekha Kamalasan, a $20-an-hour tutor who helps Amita with her geometry homework during twice-a-week, one-hour sessions. Using an electronic white board and a copy of Amita's textbook, Kamalasan guides her through the nuances of cross-multiplication, triangle similarity and assorted geometry proofs.
Amita is one of 400 students enrolled with Growing Stars, a California-based company whose 50 tutors, most of them with master's degrees, work in an office in Cochin, India. The overseas tutors work hard to seem as American as possible. Kamalasan, who has master's degrees in business administration and mathematics, went through two weeks of accent reduction and cultural training. She learned for the first time about baseball and ice skating and had to memorize strange-sounding American holidays. And when she signed off with Amita, she said, "Good night!" even though it was just the start of her graveyard shift in India, running from 1:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. But Kamalasan, 33, doesn't mind because she makes $300 a month, double what she made as a high school teacher. "This is a very good salary," she said.
Cool! Based on a 40 hour week, this woman gets about $1.89 AN HOUR. Growing Stars, the company she works for gets $20 per student per hour, or $3200 per month, if they fill her time with students. Plus extra money from our Government via the No Child Left Behind Act. Damn!
Is this a great country or what? Or was a great country. Darn those state-of-being tenses.
Thousands of U.S. students such as Del Monte are increasingly relying on overseas tutors to boost their grades and SAT scores. The tutors, who communicate with students over the Internet, are inexpensive and available around the clock, making education the newest industry to be outsourced to other countries. Tutoring companies figure: If low-paid workers in China and India can sew your clothes, process your medical bills and answer your computer questions, why can't they teach your children, too?
But educational outsourcing has sparked a fierce response from teachers and other critics who argue that some companies are using unqualified overseas tutors to increase their profit margins.
To 15-year-old Amita Achutuni, though, tutoring on the Internet just makes sense. On a recent Monday afternoon, the Potomac resident kicked off her shoes and logged into her home computer. Then she put on her headset.
"Hi, Amita!" a woman with an Indian accent said cheerfully. "How are you doing?"
The voice belonged to Lekha Kamalasan, a $20-an-hour tutor who helps Amita with her geometry homework during twice-a-week, one-hour sessions. Using an electronic white board and a copy of Amita's textbook, Kamalasan guides her through the nuances of cross-multiplication, triangle similarity and assorted geometry proofs.
Amita is one of 400 students enrolled with Growing Stars, a California-based company whose 50 tutors, most of them with master's degrees, work in an office in Cochin, India. The overseas tutors work hard to seem as American as possible. Kamalasan, who has master's degrees in business administration and mathematics, went through two weeks of accent reduction and cultural training. She learned for the first time about baseball and ice skating and had to memorize strange-sounding American holidays. And when she signed off with Amita, she said, "Good night!" even though it was just the start of her graveyard shift in India, running from 1:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. But Kamalasan, 33, doesn't mind because she makes $300 a month, double what she made as a high school teacher. "This is a very good salary," she said.
Cool! Based on a 40 hour week, this woman gets about $1.89 AN HOUR. Growing Stars, the company she works for gets $20 per student per hour, or $3200 per month, if they fill her time with students. Plus extra money from our Government via the No Child Left Behind Act. Damn!
Is this a great country or what? Or was a great country. Darn those state-of-being tenses.
posted by Dalt Danyon at 7:40 AM
1 Comments:
Maybe this is why we keep graduating highschoolers who can't read or write
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