<p>I think how much private tutoring depends on the area, school and student. In our areas/schools, private tutoring is very common.</p>
<p>My son took an AP Chem class in junior year. My son said the teacher asked how many students have tutors and over half the class raise their hands. In his senior year, my son tutor several students (very good money).</p>
<p>As hudsonvalley51 said life has never been a level playing field.</p>
<p>At our school, I don’t think it has to do with the teaching not being good enough. My son did fine wihtout ever having a tutor. But as the subjects get harder, mostly the AP science and math classes, teachers run them more like college classes. Students are expected to do some self learning, research on the web, work with friends, have a tutor or whatever resources they can get.</p>
<p>Every parent has a different threshold of when they think they need to step in. If your student is getting a C in math getting a tutor to help may be worth it if it’s in the budget. If your student is in BC Calc and is getting a B after meeting several times with the teacher for after school help, the student (and parents) is concerned that the B is going to cause a problem in admissions, and money isn’t an issue, they may be more than happy to pay a tutor to make an A more likely.</p>
<p>It comes down to who the student is, what their goals are, and how much that specific grade could actually cost them (in admissions OR as a building block towards another class).</p>
<p>Another factor is WHY is the grade low? My son came home with two very uncharacteristic grades on a mid-quarter report. When I pressed him for information about what he was having trouble with, it turns out that the tests in one class were in a different format. Okay, have you seen the teacher after class for help and clarification? No, then do! In another class he hadn’t finished the reading assignment. Okay sherlock, I think time management might be an issue here. While both grades were unexpected, neither screamed the need for a tutor. Don’t get me wrong, my son is not lazy (well sometimes they ALL are). His EC is time demanding, Sr year has several APs, and college apps take time. The point is a tutor wasn’t the answer.</p>
<p>Weird. I understand doing Kumon to get a kid ahead of grade level. I understand having a tutor to make up for less-than-adequate teaching. </p>
<p>I don’t get having a tutor in order to be on the math team. Those are the kids who love math so much that they love studying math on their own. They tend to be kids who are naturally great at math. They might want a mentor–someone to help them work through a complex paper, for instance–but a tutor? These kids tutor each other. </p>
<p>Besides, having a tutor would cut into EC time. No time for robotics team or Science Bowl/olympiad or that cool research project that’ll be a serious contender for Intel. </p>
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<p>Mom2424, this comes across as you implying that if parents don’t give their children supplemental tutoring and coaching, then they are not doing right by their children. Is that really what you intended to say?</p>
<p>Emaheevul07, the kids tell each other about the tutors and pass along the contact information.
One well-known physics tutor in our area charges 90 dollars an hour and tutoring is his full-time job. Our local public HS has two weak teachers for Physics, so that’s part of the demand. The other part is that when everyone else is completely solid on the class, and it’s graded on a curve, a student has to keep up to that level. Kids scramble at the beginning of the year to get a weekly slot at a good time with a few tutors who are outstanding.</p>
<p>Our kids met with the French tutor a couple of days a week before school. So it didn’t interfere with ECs (D2 has Latin before school twice a week, but the tutor was able to schedule around that).</p>
<p>Interesting that someone noted above that tutors may be needed when teaching is poor. The French tutor we hired was another French teacher at our D’s school. For D1, it was recommended by her French teacher that we pay another teacher for the tutoring. D needed more help than her teacher had time to provide… So when D2 started to struggle (with a different teacher), I just went to the same tutoring teacher and asked her to tutor D2. But it didn’t occur to me to tell her French teacher. And he was p***ed when he found out. I think he interpreted it as an insult to his teaching. He called me about it… I thought he wanted to talk about D2’s performance in his class, but he really wanted to chew me out for hiring this other teacher to tutor and not telling him. But it wasn’t meant as an insult to his teaching, it was much more about knowing my Ds have no foreign language talent and figuring we would just jump on it early with D2. He is still making snide comments to me about it a year later.</p>
<p>Private tutoring in my neighborhood is very common. The role of the tutor is enrichment and not help for a kid who is in trouble. Most of the kids who need help are relying on their classroom teachers for some extra time but those who have their eye on the top schools are seeing tutors in reading, writing and math to improve their critical thinking skills. I think it speaks to the perception of public education even in the best school districts. This seems to be more common in the last couple of years. When my kids were in school only kids who had problems in a subject went to tutoring. </p>
<p>I actually think one on one tutoring offers students the ability to really move forward and be prepared for college level work. Public schools just do not address reading or writing the way it should, and as a result there are many college freshman and soph that can’t write a paper.</p>
<p>It is very common in our public HS. We have ambitious kids and parents, but a tenure system and union environment that keeps poor teachers employed. People pay $50-150/hr for kids in Honors/AP courses to be tutored when they have teachers who are chronically absent, ineffective, or in some cases quit the day before school starts, leaving a class with a sub until a teacher can be hired. Everyone knows if kids switch to a lower lever, it looks like they are not “challenging themselves” to colleges. It is sad this happens, but at least we have parents who can afford tutors. What happens where parents can’t afford tutors? </p>
<p>I can’t believe I have been so naive about this. I just recently figured out this tutor phenomenon in our high school. I remember when my daughter was a sophomore a parent offered to give me the name of her daughter’s tutor,who tutored her in every subject. I just thought the kid wasn’t that bright - not that it was a competition. It is so sad, because my daughter let this competition get her down and made her feel she wasn’t very smart, even though she was in the gate program in elementary school and scored in the 99th percentile on her ACT. She kind of gave up keeping up with those kids. Now that she is in college and getting As she acts surprised. I tell her I knew she could do it all along. I suppose I feel guilty that I didn’t go to this extreme.
Am I doing things diffrently with my younger child? When she needs extra help, I have hired a tutor two or three times to help get her up to speed. I still can’t justify having a tutor for every subject, but I don’t want her self esteem to suffer if she thinks she isn’t as good as the students getting extra help. The whole thing seems a little crazy. Their self esteem suffers if they don’t get the tutor, but how does it help your self esteem if you feel like you couldn’t do it on your own without a lot of help? What happens in college?</p>
<p>I have never heard of tutoring except for kids that are struggling/failing. Our HS is 60-65% minority and economically diverse (35% low income). I’m sure there may be high achieving schools in our area where this may be more common - but not at our run-of-the-mill, ordinary HS. But I have to say that only 3 or 4 of our top students have college dreams any higher than state flagships or maybe Rice. Typically, the kids who get in HYP from our school are URM.</p>
<p>whyme1 -
It sounds as though your daughter is doing more than just fine! As for your younger daughter’s self-esteem… that’s a tough one. My thought is that if your student is working to their potential without a tutor then your are fine. If you find a situation where a teacher is presenting information in a way that just doesn’t click, or it is a class that just isn’t your daughter’s best subject, then maybe you consider the value of it. The hard part is to try to help your daughter with feelings of not being as good as students who are being tutored constantly. I don’t profess to know how to do that, but that would be my goal.</p>
<p>Count me as another who did NOT know of the tutoring phenom.</p>
<p>I live in a low to low-middle class area, so ti could be we just don’t have the $. My kids do go to private school, but comparitively it is a “cheap” school and not as competitive as our neighboring privates (Princeton area).</p>
<p>It is disheartning to me because it is something I cannot provide to my kids.</p>
<p>I think we are on the edge of it, or perhaps I just dont want to dig further to find out this may be going on here as Im sure it must be as we are a competitive area but even though we live in a rich district, we are not, so no extra $$ for tutors (or private sports training either). I did get my oldest, now in college, one her junior year for BC Calc she wasnt struggling per say but there was a big issue with her teacher and my D lost her confidence and didnt feel she had anyone to turn to for the questions she did have so to get her back on track to where she felt she had a grasp on everything I hired another teacher. It was a great solution, short term, got my D back in the groove and her she developed a good working style with the tutor who was her teacher the next year for MV Calc. But it was a stretch to do so for that time so unless my kids need it we just cant justify it and if that means they arent getting in at the top elites, Im (and they) are okay with that.</p>
<p>I wish my S would AGREE to have a tutor in a subject he is really not good at. He is math and science challenged, and it killed his GPA. I would have gladly paid for a private tutor, but he wouldn’t do it, and I am philosophically opposed to forcing things on my kids. APs and Honors galore in English/Socials studies, but Bs and Cs in math & science. Same thing in SAT. top 2% in CR and W, but the M score pulled the total score down. At least, he agreed to get some help for the math section before the SAT last Sat. We will see what happens now.</p>
<p>Tutoring is essential at college level, since even the best K-12 do not prepare kids sufficiently in math and science. So, kids realize, that they either seek help or they might forget about engineering career (as an example). It does not have to be private though. My D. is Supplemental Instructor for Chem. prof. Kids love her sessions, the regulars are definitely improving their grades, which has been recognized by her boss. According to her, most kids are trying to memorize where knowledge of math is lacking. It does not work, memorization in place of analytical methods will burry even the best.</p>
<p>And in terms of not affording it. Again, you do not have to pay. Open up the textbook, learn yourself and help your kid. We have helped our D. whenever she asked us all thru her senior year. When we had no idea, we would just open her textbook and figure it out. We both have been working full time and driving her to numerous EC’s after work on a daily basis. However, if you want to support your child, you are the best source. She was still seeking help in college physics from us, but also used prof’s office hours any time she had slightest doubt about concept. D. is college senior and so far has never had a “B” in her life. We did not pay a single dime in tutoring ever.</p>
<p>This. Yes! We didn’t see much of this at our kids’ HS, but they graduated a few years ago. I don’t think it’s changed much, though, as it’s a non-competitive public. We let the chips fall where they may. I think D and S would have looked at us as if we had grown an extra head or something if we had suggested tutoring. They had better things to do with their time. I don’t know what we’d have done if we’d been in an arms-race kind of situation; glad we weren’t.</p>
<p>The few kids I know that are at the top of the class and have received tutoring have done it to protect their 4.0’s in their junior and senior year and it’s usually math and physics. We have a math tutor in our neighborhood who charges $60 an hour for group tutoring on a drop-in basis and he has tons of cars outside his house every night. I did have a tutor for my son in geometry freshman year but that’s because he was having some difficulty. I know lots of kids too who get tutoring in Spanish but they’re all struggling too.</p>
<p>I am sorry - I only meant-- Most parents want to help their children do well with the talents they have – they will put them on select sports teams- singing lessons - musical instructors </p>
<p>– So if academics is your child’s talent – they don’t play sports- or instruments - or drama-- then the AP test, the SAT, ACT, and so on are their time to shine - I think it is great for parents to provide additional tutoring to their child – everyone is different with what they can and are willing to provide to their children-</p>