<p>Just curious how many parents send their kids to tutors, whether 1 on 1 or an after school institute to help on their classes. Why do you choose to do so, and what does it help with (classes, skills, etc)? Feel free to add some detail such as cost, frequency, time, helpfulness, if a lot of others do it too, etc.</p>
<p>I sent my dd to a private one-on-one tutor for her SAT from August through March of her junior year. She took the SAT in January and March. She met with her tutor approximately 90-120 minutes a week one day a week. I live in NY and if I told you how much we spent on the tutor, which we loved and I think very worth it, I am sure all on CC would have a stroke since it seems most just have their kids practice on their own. My dd did practice on her own but wanted the tutor, which we (I) researched and came highly recommended.</p>
<p>During her HS years, I’ve sent her to a tutor if she felt she needed it in math during the first few months of school. She’s always been in advanced math and we didn’t send her because she was failing, she wanted to go to maintain her grade in the 90s. I work in a private college so instead of using an “adult” I called the dept. chair and asked him to give my number to a student he thought would want some extra cash and did well. She didn’t need a real teacher, she needed someone to explain to her in different terms and she was not near failing.
For the student tutoring her once a week for one hour, I paid $20. I did this beginning of frehman, junior and beginning of senior year.</p>
<p>My ds had a tutor in 5 and 6th grade, in math and English, to keep his grades in the 90s. This tutor was his teacher in school. I paid her $35 an hour, which I thought was well worth it since I knew she would tutor him according to the math and english tests she would give.</p>
<p>I also sent my ds to a private one-on-one tutor so he can be prepared to take a special test given for private high school. He had the tutor from August through November.</p>
<p>My dd is approximately a 95% student with all AP classes and college Spanish, Varsity sport and ECs and my ds is a 90 student in 8th grade.</p>
<p>I never used a tutor for my kids until fairly recently. In sophomore Algebra II my D, who had always done well in math, started having trouble. Big trouble! The class moved very quickly and I am not capable/up on math anymore, so we turned to a professional tutoring service. It is expensive (between $50-75/hr, depending on which tutor) but was so worth it. It is one on one. I looked at hiring a grad student, which would have cost less, but the tutors at the service are very experienced teachers and I’ve been happy–I feel like the right grad student could be wonderful, but especially with math, being good at it does not mean you are good at teaching it!</p>
<p>The tutor could focus on just the problem areas, and seemed much better than the classroom teacher at explaining the things my D wasn’t understanding. It may have just been the one-on-one aspect that helped. In just a couple sessions, she was caught up and feeling confident. Once she was back in the swing of things, we stopped the tutoring, except for a refresher session prior to the final exam.</p>
<p>We have used tutors in music (trumpet) and computer science. Usually in music people call it a “music teacher.” Don’t know why there is a difference. Anyway, in music the sessions were weekly for a half hour or an hour. The rate was between $50 and $60/hour.</p>
<p>My younger son learned to program when he was 8. At 11 he was feeling really alone, and wanted to take his programming skills further. We found him what has turned out to be the world’s best tutor, on Craig’s list no less. We pay him $50 an hour and he comes over on a weekly basis, although after about a year we had a small argument about it – he wanted to lower his rate, and we think he is worth much more. It’s still great. My son just turned 15 and they are watching Stanford’s AI class online, and prepping for the USA computing olympiad.</p>
<p>I’ve had a ton of people ask me about tutoring for high level math, say at the level of the American Invitational Math Exam. I’ll bet a tutor with the ability to teach contest math could ask $100-$200 and hour here in northern Virginia and get it.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input everyone. Curious to see if anyone has attended an educational institute afterschool in a class-setting and their thoughts on it.</p>
<p>I hired a tutor last year to help my son pass Chemistry and Algebra II. We’ve kept him for this year also to help him with Physics and Geometry. My son has a really hard time keeping up in math and science classes and really needs the 1 on 1 attention. We’re planning on keeping him next year my son’s senior year for PreCalc. We pay through a tutoring service $50 an hour for usually 1 1/2 hours a week. Does my son get A’s with a tutor? No but he no longer gets D’s.</p>
<p>I’ve used tutors sporadically for various of my kids. </p>
<p>I used one for oldest son before his Math A Regents because he was getting a D in the class. He had one session and earned an 85 (Mastery level!) on the test. The tutor was a friend and charged $50/hr.</p>
<p>I used one for D before the Math A Regents. It was $100/hr as she needed a higher level tutor so I hired a retired college math professor and she had 4 sessions and earned an 88. I used one for her for a couple of sessions before the chemistry regents retake (she failed on her the first time).</p>
<p>I used one (a teacher in a nearby district) for current senior for foreign language and he got a B+ for the year. The next year, he refused tutoring, did NO HW and failed the class.</p>
<p>I used one for next child (with dyslexia) in grade 1 to supplement his reading training. I used one (friend’s son) for him in math last year because his teacher was so awful. The boy tutoring him recommended that he have a scribe because he reverses his numbers and can’t write straight columns so I had that added to his IEP and he wound up with a B+ for the year and an 83 on the regents. I used the same tutor I’d used for my oldest son for his math to tutor this one twice before his bio regents and he got a 91.</p>
<p>I used a student to tutor my youngest in foreign lang about 3 times ($20/hr) but she said he doesn’t need it anymore. I began organizing an informal study group for him and 2 friends and their moms in english and history - we do a 2 hour group study at the public library the weekend before a big test. All 3 boys have had their grades improve.</p>
<p>In general, my feeling about tutoring for honors/AP students is that if they need tutoring on a regular basis, they don’t belong in the class and should drop down.</p>
<p>Both of my kids are hopeless at French (there is a gene for this, and they got a double dose from ex-H and me). We have paid one of the high school French teachers $25/half hour for twice a week French tutoring in soph thru senior years of high school. That is the only tutor (except for me!) they have had.</p>
<p>My DD has displayed test anxiety since elementary school. Math seemed to really throw her off. She had a young algebra and geometry teacher in middle school that she really clicked with. We hired that middle school teacher to help DD with her high school math. She made it all the way through AP Stats and AP Calc BC with ongoing support. She is very confident with her math now. It was worthwhile and we are glad we started before she was in a crisis.
DD looked forward to seeing her math tutor on a regular basis and is studying math in college now as part of her requirements. She did not require any other tutoring in high school. She actually tutored younger children herself for math and writing as a result of the confidence she gained.</p>
<p>We used a tutor once a week for about 2 months to work on the SAT Math section, since S did very well on the PSAT CR and didn’t need or have time for a class. Our goal was to get his scores high enough to get into the state flagship honors program. About $60/hr and worth every penny since S now qualifies for at least a half tuition merit scholarship. The tutor was an emergency room physician who just loves working with kids. And he made house calls! We recommended him to friends, and he helped their D add 400 pts to her SAT score (she was test phobic) qualifying her for the same program. Best return on investment ever!</p>
<p>I used (and still use) tutors for my son.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Spanish tutor over the summer between 7th and 8th grade, because my son was transferring districts and in order to have Spanish in 8th grade he was supposed to have taken 9 week Spanish course in 7th grade. The tutor was Spanish teacher from a different district and I paid her $35 per hour once a week during summer.</p></li>
<li><p>Physics tutor - my son took Honors Physics online course from Northwester University CTY. The teacher was of no help. The tutor was math graduate student and I paid him $40 per hour. We also kept him for one semester when my son was taking Geometry at University of Minnesota through UMTYMP in 8th grade. It was a good investment, because my son really liked the tutor and could ask him questions regarding his homework (instead of driving to the U to attend study sessions - time saving for our family)…</p></li>
<li><p>Language arts tutor - up until high school my son was not able to register for advanced/honor language arts classes, even though his MAP (standardized) tests showed that he was more than capable (95th percentile). It all started in 3rd grade when his teacher had him removed from advanced reading/LA class because of … bad behavior (he has ADHD). Anyway, when my son took SAT in 7th grade I was horrified by the results and sought out Language arts tutor (not just for SAT, but for Language arts skills in general). After 3 months of tutoring he scored in 99th percentile in standardized state test (and his lexicon range doubled). In 8th grade both CR and R improved by about 100 points (essay improved from 6 to 8), so it made me happy. He is now in 9th grade and is doing great in grammar and vocabulary quizzes/tests in his Honors Language arts class (A- first quarter, A this quarter so far). His writing improved substantially too. He still has a long way to go before he achieves scores in CR and R that are decent, so he is still being tutored (at $30 per hour) almost every week.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In general I feel that tutors should not be necessary, but sometimes we have no choice (see above).</p>
<p>In Buffalo, normal private tutors (schoolteachers after school, recommended by the GC) charge around $35/hour. When our family moved during the summer and registered for h.s., our rising 9th Grader faced a glitch in foreign languages offered. His middle school language (Hebrew) wasn’t offered here, but he had passed the NY State Regents Exam for it. He could have graduated with just that, but wanted to begin a new language, Spanish. Unfortunately, the only Year One languages offered were Latin and German. Other Ninth Graders studying Spanish were already in Year Two or Three. </p>
<p>With a Spanish tutor 1x/week – a high school teacher from a nearby district – to make sure all the homework was sharp, the GC let him jump into Year Two Spanish anyway, just staying afloat until he was on-par, which happened by the end of first term. His first term grade was weak but nobody cared. All this allowed him to graduate with two foreign languages, passed exams at the NYState Regents level. He attended college in California and now resides there, so Spanish was a good choice. </p>
<p>At another juncture, we engaged a much more sophisticated graduate student with Harvard degrees in Math who advertised on Craigslist. It was 11th grade and our kid’s poor middle school foundation, plus a lot of moving around districts, caught up with him. It wasn’t a matter of doing that year’s regular math homework. He needed someone to get in and diagnose what he didn’t understand from many gaps and glitches in curriculum since middle school. This guy was brilliant, efficient and made a solid improvement. He also played electric guitar at the end of each session. We paid $70/hour and it stung, but my instinct was we’d be wasting time and money to engage the usual homework-support math tutor for $35/hour.</p>
<p>Both of our kids got tutored for SATs, those were 1:1 sessions. The cost was about $75-100/hour.</p>
<p>D1 tutored a lot in high school and during school breaks while in college. She charged $50/hour. She worked with few students before their finals. She helped them organized their notes, reviewed each subject material with them. A lot of it was just organization.</p>
<p>No, unless you count private music teachers.</p>
<p>We just hired our first tutor. My senior was struggling with AP Calc AB - she’d been in the school play and fell behind with all the rehearsal time. One of my HS friends teaches the same class at a local prep school and we hired her, 100.00 an hour, to help her. It’s been GREAT.</p>
<p>I suppose I tutored my kids myself, though only one really needed the support. She did fine in school (well enough) but had some attention issues. And she applied to SAT optional schools.</p>
<p>The role of a private music teacher is very different from the role of a tutor, in most cases. A private music teacher guides music education and establishes the path or curriculum, which is individualized for the student, sometimes with an eye toward community opportunities. Many private music teachers will not help with auditions for school orchestras. </p>
<p>A tutor provides support or additional instruction for a course the student is taking elsewhere, typically in school. Sometimes tutors will extend the learning, but except in special circumstances, the goal of the tutor is to help the student learn the material that the student is expected to master for a particular course or test (like SAT).</p>
<p>I’ve noticed that everyone has gone with 1 on 1 tutors. I am wondering the reasons you chose one-on-one vs a class setting since private tutors tend to be on the expensive side, and the tutor himself/herself likely won’t be a top quality option.</p>
<p>Nope, no tutors.</p>
<p>We chose 1 on 1 because I knew this person and the quality of her skills. If I sent my kid to a “Tutoring Club” or other storefront, I have no idea what I’m getting. </p>
<p>A few years ago, this same daughter needed help with a 10th grade math class. I asked around and was given the name of a middle school math teacher. Paid her 100.00 to have her say to my child: “Wow. This stuff is hard. I think you need to ask your teacher about it.” If the teacher had been receptive to questions (teacher is notoriously unapproachable), we wouldn’t have had to hire a tutor! </p>
<p>This time, I wasn’t making the same mistake. I hired a friend who teaches the same AP Calc class at a local prep school.</p>