Online Tutors Based in India Claimed To Be From Texas

For the past year, more than 2,000 city schoolchildren have been interacting with online tutors who haven't gone through criminal background checks, an investigation has found.

The 250 tutors are based in India but claimed they were in Texas. They were hired by a private company, Socratic Learning Inc., which the city contracted last year to help children in 44 struggling public schools under the federal No Child Left Behind regulations.

"Socratic blatantly violated its contract and we are suspending their contract pending further action by the state," a Department of Education spokesman, Andrew Jacob, said. "We will notify parents of any students who enrolled with Socratic Learning this fall they should select" a new provider.

The tutors were never screened with required fingerprint and background checks before they began working with city children, according to a report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation, Richard Condon

A co-owner of Socratic Learning, Mythili Sridhar, who is responsible for training the company's tutors, admitted in a letter after an investigation was launched last summer that the tutors did not live in Texas. Ms. Sridhar, who trains the tutors, wrote that they "tutor from there homes," failing to correctly spell the word "their."

The company's Web site advertises its primary service as "online one-on-one tutoring with highly qualified college degreed instructors." Last year, the department reminded the company to send a list of its online tutors but it never did so, the report said. Outside providers of tutoring services are required to submit a list of their employees to an electronic database maintained by the Department of Education, which then conducts the background checks.

In November, an official from the education department's Office of Personnel Investigation, Carmela Cuddy, advised Socratic Learning that it would not grant security clearance to any staff members who didn't have Social Security numbers.

Department officials said they weren't aware the company had tutors based in India until an investigation into a separate matter was launched in June.

The investigation came after the director of Supplemental Educational Services, Betty Arce, filed a complaint about Socratic Learning's allegedly illegal practice of offering computers to parents of students who completed its tutoring program. The company earns an estimated $2,175 a student, according to the commissioner's office, but only if the students complete the program. During the course of the investigation into the computer scam, it came out that the online tutors working with city children were based in India and had never been checked out by the department.

Under the No Child Left Behind law, all students that attend schools on the list of schools in need of improvement for two years can apply for supplementary tutoring services. The services are supplied by outside providers that are vetted by the state and paid for by the city using federal funds. Parents can choose between 91 programs in the city, up from 87 last year. The Department of Education paid Socratic Learning $2.4 million last year out of a $75 million total paid to such programs.