| The world as we know it is changing in leaps | | | | "supplemental educational services", which |
| and bounds on a daily basis. Our children are | | | | includes tutoring. About 19% of those |
| growing up knowing and using iPods and | | | | students got those services, or roughly two |
| computers with gigabytes of data storage for | | | | out of every ten students who were not |
| all their music and video files. High-speed | | | | proficient in core subjects, received aid. A |
| Internet has become a way of life where more | | | | good analogy would be a physician telling the |
| young people subscribe to read, chat, and | | | | parents of ten children that that they need |
| communicate with friends online than ever | | | | medicine to cure an illness and only two out |
| before. As the Internet marketplace continues | | | | of the ten children can receive the medicine |
| to expand rapidly, and technologies afford | | | | that they need. The need for tutoring is |
| education access from the ease and | | | | obviously there. Why then is the current |
| convenience of home, it is imperative that | | | | method of tutoring inadequate? There are |
| parents and educators recognize the benefits | | | | principally four reasons why tutoring has |
| involved in education online. The public | | | | been ineffective: 1) Schools can recruit |
| education system in the United States grew | | | | tutors for students in rural areas and even |
| out of an economy based upon single income | | | | fewer for those students in those areas with |
| workers, zero competition from outside | | | | disabilities. 2) School districts do not tell |
| markets for internal education consumers, and | | | | parents that tutoring is available. When |
| more manufacturing jobs than service jobs. | | | | letters are sent home they often arrive late |
| The baby boomers born during the post World | | | | and are hard to understand. 3) Tutors are not |
| War II era, enjoyed the benefits of President | | | | allowed into schools and do not coordinate |
| Franklin D. Roosevelt's Servicemen's | | | | with teachers or the curriculum in the |
| Readjustment Act or the GI Bill of Rights, | | | | classroom, leaving the student confused. 4) |
| which granted affordable access to college | | | | State education departments do not evaluate |
| education. The baby boomers of the United | | | | the quality of tutors, as the law requires. |
| States catapulted into growth as a result of | | | | On one hand we have American schools and |
| this, enjoying an unprecedented level of | | | | students failing and in need of remediation, |
| abundance and prosperity. One of these baby | | | | operating under an outdated system of |
| boomers is President George W. Bush, who | | | | education, and money going to waste, and on |
| enacted the No Child Left Behind Act (NCBA), | | | | the other hand we have an emerging technology |
| offering the societal challenge of making | | | | platform based on high speed broadband |
| every child proficient in reading and math by | | | | technology that is leveling the playing field |
| 2012. A schoolteacher for more than thirty | | | | for people, and companies worldwide. This |
| years, who now runs a management company for | | | | technology is one that not only attracts our |
| teacher training, described the resultant | | | | children, but also captivates them, so that |
| effect of this act upon the public school | | | | they return to computers and multimedia |
| system as one which far exceeded the | | | | repeatedly for entertainment. Armed with this |
| capabilities of what American public schools | | | | knowledge, how can we as parents and |
| can currently offer. Despite the grandiose | | | | educators remain blind to the changes within |
| claims of the NCBA, actual school performance | | | | our own culture for learning and acquiring |
| began to decrease after the passage of the | | | | knowledge and the ways in which our children |
| act and the United States, as a whole, fell | | | | are learning? Tutoring programs such as take |
| behind in education. Supplemental Educational | | | | these tools and put them to use to educate |
| Services In 2004-2005, there were more than | | | | our children in a fun and engaging manner. |
| 22 million children eligible for | | | | |