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<p>They have the subject in their minds because they work in the field while the rest of us forgot most of what we learned in college.</p>
<p>We just sent our son and daughter for dual-enrollment classes at local colleges and universities and used distance education courses.</p>
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<p>Yes. It is cram school. There are also several Asian run cram schools in my area. These are mostly used in elementary school and early middle school. It always seems as if private tutors are preferred for high school, at least around here.</p>
<p>I’m well past the point where I could help my son in math and science; it’s more likely that I will ask him to explain something that seems counter-intuitive to me (like the classic Monty Hall problem). However, I can provide a lot of useful “big picture” input that would generally be beyond the scope of a subject tutor.</p>
<p>My son is taking two college classes and an online class in addition to his 5 APs and 2 honors classes at school. Then there are the extracurriculars, some of which are time-flexible. He tends to be a perfectionist when he’s working on a project and is predisposed toward working on the fun or interesting projects first. </p>
<p>I’ve become his workflow/time management assistant. I make sure his gets his immediate homework done; that he starts longer writing projects as early as possible (lest he get 3 big ones due the same week, which has been known to happen); and that he remembers to come back to his projects with flexible deadlines regularly. Sometimes he uses too much time – his scarcest resource – making a solid A project into a cool, over-the-top project and I need to gently remind him of his other projects in the pipeline. Occasionally, he’ll get a low-to-mid-B writing grade and I need to remind him to ask his teacher WHY, so he can fix the problem NOW before it begins to seriously impact his overall grade (usually it’s because he didn’t add enough supporting details, things he found to be too obvious to need repeating).</p>
<p>So I think that, in many ways, an attentive parent can be much more useful overall than a subject-specific tutor.</p>
<p>I was amused by someone suggesting there is a high rate of private tutoring in chinese communities. Let’s not be prejudicial.</p>
<p>It’s all over. My family is Upper Middle Class at best, but live in an affluent community with the wealthiest Americans. My daughter surprised me one day when she came home from school and announced in this mostly white suburb with the top school in the State insofaras SAT scores, that it is commonplace for kids to have Math and ‘every subject’ tutors. </p>
<p>She went on to explain that everyone thinks its the schools and local teachers behind the high SAT test scores when in reality lots of these high performing kids have tutors in most subjects, and certainly in Math. But its no different than those families in nearby towns sending their kids to the Russian Math School on Saturdays to try to give their kids an edge. </p>
<p>It’s the same for music, where the local middle and high schools send the most number of kids to junior and senior districts every year for chorus and orchestra. On face value, you’d think wow, either the kids are just more talented or the school is doing a really good job, better than most public schools. Behind the scenes, most of the kids are taking private music lessons at top music instrumental schools in the area. It has very little to do with the public school music programs.</p>
<p>"Kumon is an after-school enrichment program. Though some describe it as drill and kill. It is somewhat asian-oriented. "</p>
<p>-Never had any time for stuff like that. Whole tons of EC’s, dinner was usually consumed in a car (not fast food though, could not do junk, was heavily in sport among others). Nope, just parental academic support when asked (few time a year) - great results. D. went to very small private prep. school, we had kids driving from different state to our school, was best local k - 12. Privates can still do so much, they have to follow the same academic plan, they cannot start physics in 6 grade. One year of physics (just as example) is ridiculous, they need at least 3 years to have some kind of idea about subject and that alone reguire much higher level of math. Levels of math and science are hugely behind in american HS’s, all of them, including the best ones. Kids who are interested in these subjects are bored out og their wits and end up hating them (on a brink of it with my granddaughter - in 6th grade). Very sad.</p>
<p>Coming back to PaperChaserPop’s summary in #176, just wanted to add a few remarks:
I’m not actually advocating moving out. We were on the SF peninsula on a temporary basis, for a year, but have lived in the Midwest for a long time. Still, I’m thankful about the environment here.</p>
<p>I agree with others who say the SAT and ACT just aren’t that hard. I think some families get tricked/panicked/conned into spending money on test prep that isn’t needed. Locally, a lot of students do very well with the SAT (2350+, first sitting) based on purchase of the book of 10 Real SAT’s–they don’t even need to read much of the book.</p>
<p>The idea of “pre-gaming” high school courses, even AP’s, seems ridiculous to me–thanks for the terminology, curmudgeon. For a strong student, it’s a colossal waste of time; and I sympathize with a student who is in a class populated by students who have already had the entire course before. </p>
<p>A relevant quasi-experiment: The local public university offers highly accelerated high-school math (4 years compressed into 2) for middle schoolers, based on SAT scores from the Talent Search. Students at one of the middle schools customarily take only the university course, while students at the other middle school take both the university course and the slightly accelerated course at the high school. In QMP’s year, 3 students from the program took AP Calc BC as high-school freshmen. All 3 scored 5 on the exams, and went on to university-level math for the rest of high school. All 3 came from the middle school where students took the university course only.</p>
<p>I think private tutoring/acceleration in math is great, if it’s really acceleration. I can’t imagine the boredom of a really talented student who is also taking honors/AP high school math at the same time!</p>
<p>When it comes to Math Olympiad level, I believe that students virtually all need some outside assistance to qualify. In much of the country, most high-school math teachers are incapable of handling problems at the USAMO level of challenge, so they can hardly help the students. Math Camp (the real one, anyway) has nothing whatever to do with preparing students to maintain a 99.9 average in Pre-Calc. It is on an entirely different level. I agree with collegealum314’s earlier post on this issue.</p>
<p>Finally, on a different topic, I think that additional tutoring for LD students is an excellent idea–it’s probably extremely valuable in such a case.</p>
<p>I remember being quite stunned when I found out that some of this stuff was going on as well – people taking the course twice (once at CC, once in high school); parents writing essays; tutoring for kindergarteners.</p>
<p>In my mind, many people lose perspective and engage in practices that are ethically murky, if not outright dishonest. </p>
<p>But the secondary issue is that it’s hard for those of us who regard our children as autonomous individuals who are responsible for their own time management, own grades, own sense of achievement and accomplishment – to find our kids competing with kids who are, to some degree, more like corporations like autonomous individuals. To my way of thinking, if Johny’s mother quits her job to chauffeur Johny around, if her time management planner is full of Johny’s appointments (with notations like: Check and see if Johny can take AP math NEXT year; investigate options for Johny’s summer programs; call Moms in my exercise class to see who John can still ask to the prom) and if she’s the one scheduling the college applications, along with Johny’s dad who might be tasked with “proofing” all papers, gathering all resources for all research papers, scheduling appointments with experts to assist Johny with research paper, and this is in addition to: the math tutor, the college counselor, the psychologist who is responsible for certifying that Johny has ADD so that he can have extra time on the SAT’s, etc. etc. etc. then Johny is not actually one child. Rather, he’s Johny, Inc. – accompanied by his producer, his director, his support staff and so forth. </p>
<p>It’s difficult for my individual child to have to compete with the child who is being managed and produced by a team and who has his own support staff. My sense is that many Asian cultures regard the child’s achievement as very much a collective achievement, whereas many of us non-Asians might be more likely to regard it as an individual achievement. I guess in a society where it’s regarded as a group project, you’re less likely to wait until the child expresses an interest in, for example, learning math. YOu’re probably more likely to just enroll them in something when they’re three because you as the parent have the time and the interest. It would seem somewhat strange to me, for example, to insist that my child play the violin and practice for four hours a day because I wanted it. </p>
<p>I think what some of us are experiencing is this ambivalence – We FORCE ourselves to sit on our hands and not interfere with our kids because we believe that they learn from mistakes and that it is after all their life, not ours. But then it’s hard to sit on your hands and watch your child be outmaneuvered by some other child whose mother doesn’t believe in sitting on her hands and shutting her mouth. Instead, it feels like you watch your kid get steamrollered. And maybe in twenty years it will all shake out, but I’m not so sure that it does . . .</p>
<p>^ Love this post. The corporation analogy is great!</p>
<p>This reminds me of Back to School.</p>
<p>redbluegoldgreen, you accurately described my observation. Well done.</p>
<p>Momzie, I also love your corporation analogy. In fact, I think I’ll start refer to privately-tutored and packaged top kids collectively as “Johny, Inc.”</p>
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<p>Johny, Inc. is like a good athlete on steroid, except we can strip an athlete of his gold if we find out he’s juiced (remember Ben Johnson?), but there is no regulation against students taking classes at their local colleges (or with their private tutors) before taking the same classes again at their high schools.</p>
<p>momzie, I will never understand you. I was never hands off and I have never compared.</p>
<p>One thing I don’t get about the approach of taking the same class in community college and then in high school - both courses must be listed on the college application. How do parents think this doubling up strikes college admission officers?</p>
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<p>Why would a student do this? You have to provide all college and university transcripts and it would be pretty obvious that the student took the same course twice. Colleges usually don’t allow double-dipping on dual-enrollment courses; I don’t think that they would allow double-credit either; the second course would look like a retake.</p>
<p>Momzie, I love your Johny, Inc. analysis!</p>
<p>Of course, there are extreme cases, but I do believe that, in general, it takes a team to get a high school student into an elite school these days, where 90% or more of the applicants are rejected. It could simply be the teachers taking time out to help a student understand why they didn’t do well on a test or assignment; it could be coaches for math or scholastic bowl that teach the kids what they need to know to win trophies; and it could be parents who help their kids stay on task or shuttle them to extracurricular events they’ll need to make a favorable impression. SOMEONE has to explain how the game is played to these kids early in high school, or they’ll never have the credentials in place by senior year – don’t we see posts all the time on CC about kids who weren’t motivated their first 2 years and one day wake up and decide they’d like to go to an Ivy League school? By then it’s too late.</p>
<p>The line between positive teamwork and negative teamwork, in my estimation, is whether the student is the primary decision-maker or just an involuntary cog in the system. By primary decision-maker I mean they are told: You can go to college anywhere you’d like, but if you really, really want to get into these super-elite schools, you’ll need to make sacrifices, work very hard and be willing to reach out for help. It’s YOUR choice, which path do you want to take?</p>
<p>Calreader, they either audit the classes or don’t report the grades.</p>
<p>MiamiDAP, I also don’t agree with the complete hands-off parental approach.</p>
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<p>I don’t see what the problem with auditing the classes is. You don’t get homeworks, labs and exams graded. For science, math and a lot of other courses, you could just download the courses videos from MIT OCW, Yale OpenCourseware, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. One of the universities in Colorado has a complete set of course videos for their undergrad math curriculum online. These course videos are often pretty interesting for the self-motivated student to learn interesting material but you usually need a textbook and the motivation to go through the exercises on your own to learn the course material.</p>
<p>I don’t see how you can avoid reporting the grades.</p>
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<p>I guess I draw the line between reading up on one’s own versus being taught by a third party, particularly if this is forced upon the student.</p>
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<p>With online course videos available from the best schools for free, why would a parent bother with the local community college or state university? That requires transportation and scheduling.</p>
<p>Miami… Your granddaughter is bored with physics in the 6th grade? Unless she is a genious that tells me that there has been alot of tutoring going on in that household. I have three kids that I would consider to be very bright and not a one of them even looked at physics in the 6th grade no less be bored with any subject. If a kid is bored with a subject than they have pre learned the information and that is the point that many are making here. If enrichment is provided for the sheer love of learning than bordom would not set in. Your grandchild however, is learning the info ahead of time.</p>
<p>Miami…I just went back and reread that post and it actually infuriated me. What the heck do you expect a public school here in the US to do with a mixed group of children in the 6th grade? We are here in the United States where education is provided for all that want it. We are not a country who tells our children that education stops at a certain age or level because they did not do well enough on a test. That post of yours if read carefully will grind alot of gears.</p>
<p>BCEagle91 - you just don’t send them a CC transcript but rather just your h.s. transcript. It’s not like the university will know that you were also enrolled in a local CC. </p>
<p>I knew a few people in my h.s. that took the class at the CC over the summer or the semester before in order to be prepped for the actual class at our school. They didn’t send a CC transcript to their colleges along with their applications. However, a few smart ones, after being accepted, sent the transcripts and were able to get credits for those classes at their college.</p>