Today the New York Daily News reports that Champion Learning Center pulled in more than $21 million dollars from the New York City Education Department in the past two years for tutoring NYC students.
The No Child Left Behind Act requires outsourcing of tutoring for students in schools that don’t meet their test score targets.
Champion’s contract with NY Ed Department shows they received $79 per hour for tutoring sessions and that each student could receive up to four hours of tutoring per week—or $320 per student, per week.
Champion paid its part-time tutors an average of $17 an hour—the tutors are mostly college students with no teaching experience. That’s a cool $62 in overhead for Champion for every hour its employees spent tutoring a child.
“We received very little training in our orientation,” said one college student hired by Champion. “They just told us to follow the instructions in the test prep workbooks they gave us.”
Champion hired the student and one of her friends at the same time. Both say they were offered only $15 per hour for their work. In addition, they were told they would have to pay transportation costs to each child’s home and they were required to pay a $150 fee each for the cost of fingerprinting and a security check before they could start work.
The Daily News reports that Champion has tutored nearly 9,000 city students this year and is one of dozens of private, for-profit companies with state approval to provide tutoring services under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Yet another example of education deform in the USA. And Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan are only ramping up the emphasis that NCLB puts on test scores and the shift of public money in to private profits.
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