Outsourcing

As a result of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), global competition has been on the rise for the past few years. An outcome of each country's striving to be the most technologically advanced in the areas of mathematics and the sciences has led to somewhat of a rather unlikely end result- outsourcing. Outsourcing is an arrangement in which one company provides services for another company, usually from overseas. The service usually could have been provided in the country of origin, but the overseas company was chosen to either lower cost, labor, or because the technology was so far advanced. Presently, many in-demand jobs are being given to people in other states or countries because there are simply not enough qualified applicants to fill those positions. Employers now have a global workforce to draw from, and competition for United States jobs now comes from around the entire world. This escalates a new fear to those living in the United States. Many are wondering just how good the teaching is in other lands, how serious those students are about their educations, and just how badly they want United States citizens' jobs. Foreign interests in education, combined with the upsurge of cheap global telecommunications and advancements, have created a job pool of well-educated workers who seek jobs specifically in the programming, accounting, and medical fields for only a small amount of what the going rate is over in the United States.
A few interesting facts that I came across:
*Sylvan Online tutoring service subcontracts with a company called Career Launcher, which is based out of India. The next time your child logs online for extra skills help, he or she may not be receiving the help of an American teacher.
*A loophole in NCLB allows for the use of taxpayer money to be spent for online tutoring services, many of which are based out of New Delhi and Calcutta. These tutors do not need to be certified teachers.
*The United States is paying India over $10 million to tutor our school children nationwide for NCLB. The average Indian tutor makes a dollar an hour for his or her services, and makes about $250 a month.
*Aside from customer satisfaction, there is no measure or accountability for these outsourced professionals.
While many states are currently feeling the "crunch" of teacher layoffs and school budgets getting voted down, it would be much more advantageous to use the federal money where we really need it- at home in the United States.

Sources:
http://www.susanohanian.org/show_nclb_outrages.php?id=1178
http://www.zazona.com/NewsArchive/2005-05-26%20Education%20Process%20Outsourcing%20(EPO).htm