A reader, Jill Koyama, calls attention to an important topic:
I actually conducted a 3-year study of private tutoring companies in NYC. Here is the link to my book, Making Failure Pay: For-Profit Tutoring, High-Stakes Testing, and Public Schools, published in 2010 by the University of Chicago Press:
http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo8917055.html
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m curious. I thought NCLB was a Ted Kennedy + GWB collaboration. Where do corporations enter this picture? Here’s a question on the tutoring requirement of NCLB and my not well informed answer.
If a school is “failing” (too many kids getting low grades), should tutors be made available for free to the students of that school?
Don’t read anything into the question other that what the words explicitly say.
My thinking is yes, they should be available. In fact all schools should have tutors available. How to implement that idea is a wholly separate question and not addressed in my question.
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The for-profit tutoring providers in NYC including Champion learning and Princeton Review have inflated their attendance figures and cheated taxpayers out of millions of dollars; and yet continue to get contracts from DOE; why?
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I just purchased this book for my Kindle. I have always been curious as to owns these Tutoring companies. I believe that the Bush family has interest/investments in Sylvan Tutoring. I am trying to find out about Huntington Tutoring which is also in the Buffalo, New York area.
I cannot wait to investigate this further.
The purpose of a system is what it does. Create failure — create investment opportunities for the wealthy ! Ugh!!
Marge
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Don’t forget Kaplan!
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These companies must collect a bundle because the hourly rate they pay teachers for their after school programs is generous and you can bet your last taxpayer dollar that there’s still a lot left over for the Company. Plenty. The whole culture of it stinks to high heaven.
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The pay from Sylvan for teachers isn’t generous in my neck of the woods. They pay teachers about $8.00 an hour.
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Jennifer — Their pay to teachers isn’t generous; however, they charge parents an arm and a leg and make huge profits for their investors/owners!!!!
Marge
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Jennifer – I just heard from some colleagues that Huntington was paying $60/hr. for the after school program. Granted, only 5 hours per week, but it seemed like a lot to me. Someone said it’s all pre-planned activities, kids work at their own pace – teachers just there to monitor, etc.
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I am a teacher in a Catholic school and I work for one of these for profit tutoring companies in Chicago. I provide small group instruction to children in math and reading. Although I feel that I am conscientious and try my best to provide the best services I can for my students, the company I work for pays teachers very low salaries and forces them to teach extremely unreasonable number of hours per day with almost no preparation time. I, for example, teach nine, 40 minute classes per day with a 20 minute lunch.
The company is squeezing teachers more and more so that the company makes lots of money for their shareholdersm (because they are paid by the head). The company cares only about paperwork, and does not care one iota about whether the children learn anything at all. I love the school I work at and the children I teach, but the many, many layers of management add no value whatsover to the end product and provide zero professional development to their teachers.
If more people understood what these companies are doing, they would be outraged!
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