<p>I’m wondering if part of the problem is that so many kids are getting tutored for that class that parents are thinking that their kid is at some disadvantage to not also have the tutor. Like a ripple effect. It is kinda sad.</p>
<p>And it is one more thing that I think is indicative of these very competitive high schools and communities…the need to keep up with the others and compete and so on. This is very foreign to the experiences my kids had growing up here in VT and at their public school. They didn’t think they were competing with others…didn’t discuss grades, GPA, class rank, SAT scores, college lists, etc. with their peers. They had their own goals and strived to meet them. I think I (as well as my kids) would truly hate the competitive atmosphere that this sort of thing seems to be a part of.</p>
<p>Oldfort–perhaps I am not explaining myself. I don’t care that they are spending more than others–they can whoop it up for all I care–that’s what rich people do. Bully for them. I am, rather, making a cultural, socialogical observation at the bizarreness, to me, of people using money in a weird obsession, to me, to make their kids “perfect.”</p>
<p>Again–hurrah for them–if they believe they can really do it, then, whatever. Bottom line is, their kids’ minds are the same minds they were born with. They may become the movers and shakers of tomorrow, in fact, they probably will, but that doesn’t mean they’re any smarter than they started. On the surface, they win–but I’ve never cared about the surface (or about winning; I think that’s pretty clear.)</p>
<p>A lot of times the kids are on board with this. Many of them want to be top students and it is often a bit of a culture shock if they transfer from a school where the papers are not so carefully graded, the grades are more inflated, to a school where the kids are nearly all in the upper echelons. I can tell you that once mine were high school age, forcing a tutor on them would have been a huge waste of time. The only reason they practiced the SATs and took a course for them is because everyone does. </p>
<p>No one I knew in high school took SAT prep courses or did much studying for the SATS. Just did the sample problems in the brochure you got. Now days you are hard put to find a group of college prep kids who do not pay for some sort of SAT prep. Most all schools out and out tell you that your high schooler should have test prep. The word at my old high school was not to bother studying because it wouldn’t make any difference. </p>
<p>I think private counselors will become more common. Tutors have been around for a long, long time, and not all of them are remedial. Asian countries have a formal “second” school to specifically augment the school instruction and test prep. This is not anything new. I have no problem with people spending their money on this.</p>
<p>Where I get the twinge is when I think how much more the gap widens between the haves and have nots.</p>
<p>I wish there were a happy medium in competition and preparation. My kids’ HS was soozievt’s on steroids. No kids took a SAT prep class. The nearest cc was going to offer one, but S2 was the ONLY kid at our HS to register, so they canceled and refunded my money. Don’t think it would have made much difference–it was a $40/ 3 hr class, but still…</p>
<p>S1 just graduated from a T20. I have seen the college preparation the vast majority of those students had. Like cpt, I get the willies when I see how fast and wide the gap is growing in this country between the haves and have-nots.</p>
<p>In D2’s case, she was doing just fine in her 5th grade math class, but I knew there was something missing, she couldn’t do any calculations in her head. While D1 had mad minute in math, D2 was learning about concept of 24/12. We decided to put her in a Kumon class. She started with doing drills of 1+1, 1+2…2+2,2+3… all the way to multiplication and division. Some people may think we were trying to make her into one of those Asian math robots, but the fact is D2 was so intimidated by those simple calculations she couldn’t pay attention to learn any new concept in math. She told us that she just wasn’t good in math. After 6 months of Kumon, she was faster than most kids in her class with those calculations, and it gave her a lot of confidence. </p>
<p>Now as a junior in HS, she is taking IB math and is acing it. I think if we haven’t sent her to Kumon (less than $100/month) in 5th grade, she probably would always believe she didn’t have the mind for math or science. Sometimes a little bit of outside help could make a big difference in the long run. </p>
<p>What some posters are implying here is that if a kid is tutored then he wouldn’t be able to learn by himself someday. This is like saying, if someone is depressed and decides to seek professional help, then that person may never be able function without professional help.</p>
<p>The tutoring is not the problem but the price that these parents are paying is crazy. It would be worth it for them to cross over to New Jersey and pay a fraction of the cost.</p>
<p>Oldfort–I think the analogy would be if someone is not depressed, but decides to go on anti-depressants to ramp their mood up higher–or, a real example: kids at colleges passing around ADD drugs so they can study more, even though they don’t have an LD. </p>
<p>I think you are defending something which is not what the article was about–no one’s saying that tutoring isn’t okay–but massive tutoring at the level discussed in this particular article is qualititatively different.</p>
<p>Agreed. Nothing wrong with tutoring itself. Oldfort, it made sense that your D had some math tutoring in fifth grade and it was effective and turned math around for her! But the experiences you relate are not truly what the article depicted. Being tutored in every subject at an elite high school when a kid may not be struggling or failing but simply to keep up with the Jones’ kids so they have every advantage the others have is not the same as the kind of tutoring you describe. It should not be that almost every kid (who is already a smart cookie to even be selected to be in this school and course) in the class needs a tutor. Typically, I think of a tutor for the kid who needs remedial help who is at the bottom of the class and cannot keep up with the majority.</p>
<p>I know a lot of people who may not be clinically depressed but find it difficult to deal with everyday problems and sometimes a tough patch of life. If they can afford a pyschiatrist, or other type of mental heatlh help, fine. The same with the kids who want supplementation in the form of tutoring in academics. In the world of music, kids get coaches all of the time on the upper end of achievement levels. It can make all the difference in getting into a school like Julliard or Curtis to get a coach, and the same for some high level competitions. Why not for academics? I don’t see a thing wrong with that.</p>
<p>Where I am concerned is the use of unneeded drugs that come into play, particularly the Adderall family. Just as I don’t see an issue with a non depressed, non mentally ill person getting counseling,but would question the use of unnecessary prescription mood enhancers and other durgs, so I do with other achievement type drugs. I hold the same standard for sports too. Fine to get a coach even if you kid is a top level athlete to break into the world class circles… Families will do that. But steroids and other PEDs, uh, uhn. Unfortunately, those lines are being crossed as well. But getting a tutor to help get a great student better is fine with me.</p>
<p>As I have stated in my other posts, I do not believe majority of students at those schools are being tutored that heavily, and the article is blowing it all out of proportion. My friend´s son just graduated from Dalton few years ago. He had above average grades, but I never heard my friend talking about her son getting tutored or thought her son was disadvantage because other students were getting tutored. It was also the case at my kids´ private school. The ones who needed tutorings were kids entering their school for the first time - those kids from less rigorous schools needed remediation in certain subjects, and more often than not time management skills. </p>
<p>I think those handful of students who were getting heavily tutored at Riverdale probably wouldn´t have gotten in on their own merit, and tutoring was the only way of keeping them in.</p>
<p>See, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m interested in what you mean by “wouldn’t have gotten in on their own merit.” What do you think is the reason that they did get in? And I guess I believe if they can’t stay unless they get tutoring to “keep them in” maybe it’s not the best place for them? I don’t mean that in an argumentative way–it’s just that this last statement of your goes to the heart of what I see as a strange and questionable process. I think in a general way it plays out all over society and affects everyone, which is why I’m interested. I don’t care about the money, I’m not worried about the competition–I’m generally fascinated, in a train-wreck kind of way, by the mindset.</p>
<p>There will always be a handful of kids who got into those schools because of certain hooks (those hooks could be athletic, money, legacy), no different than some of those top tier colleges admission process. We don´t seem to have any issue with colleges tutoring athletes in order to keep them in school. Why isn´t that any less of a train wreck?</p>
<p>When I said “their own merit,” I meant their academic merit.</p>
<p>NYTimes article addresses relatively recent trend of extremely expensive tutors provided by for-profit company, using recent college grads from top-50 schools with a big mark-up for administrative costs and profit. There’s a firm in Chicago doing same, penetrating the self-defined “private high school college prep” market with expensive one-on-one tutoring as well as SAT/ACT prep classes.</p>
<p>However, there are many tutors providing valuable aid to struggling as well as high-achiever high school students, who don’t charge more than $15 to $40/hour. No one mentioned yet the uneven teaching qualities of high school teachers, even at elite college prep high schools, where parents find a tutor to compensate for weak teaching skills to ensure their child still learns and retains the class material despite the teacher’s (and classroom’s) flaws. We’ve found that our private HS college prep-educated children had “bad teachers” each year, despite the high tuition, master-degree minimum for faculty, and sizable administrative academic staff. Our kids still needed to learn the material, even if presented with ineffective teaching.</p>
<p>OF–to the extent that an athlete becomes a mover and shaker of society (ie, on government and corporate levels) because of artificial inflation of physical outcomes beyond his/her actual ability level, I’d be equally concerned. I don’t see that happening (with the exception, I guess, of the occasional former professional athlete elected to office or chosen to run a business, but that is not, I would guess, because they had inflated their natural physical abilities.)</p>
<p>On the other hand, I look around all the time and see folks who grew up rich and privileged with all the inflationary props in place, become graduate of fine institutions who are then running large corporations, or high government positions, who are plainly, in a word, dumb.</p>
<p>Ideally/hopefully, we have a functional society that weeds out those who can’t perform without crutches. If they are allowed to head crucial institutions and lead them to trainwreck, it is our society’s structure that should be questioned. If parents believe society rewards those tutored, I don’t see how anyone can stop parents from hiring tutors. </p>
<p>I do believe excessive tutoring robs kids of their personal growth oppotunity. In the long run, it doesn’t do much good for the kid and may do harm. The kid may have an aptitude in other areas that will be neglected because of intensive tutoring on certain subjects. Wouldn’t it be better to get by with Bs in those areas but excel in areas one has talent? Unless those A’s will lead to top tiers and top tiers lead to top jobs and top jobs accumulate unshakable power that will last life time. In my kid’s private HS, it didn’t pan out that way. Some kids hire tutors to stay in most advanced classes. So far those handfuls are not winning. One by one they are dropping out. In this small sample, what tutoring did was prolonging the agony.</p>
<p>The only negative observation I have had regarding tutors is the via my D, who said one of her friends felt she didn’t have to pay attention in class because her tutor would explain it to her later.</p>
<p>I don’t think it matters whether a child learns a subject in the classroom or learns it one-on-one from a tutor; the only important thing is that she learn the material. The American high school model for learning is just a societal construct anyway, and it clearly doesn’t work for every child, as indicated by drop out rates and illiteracy.</p>
<p>I also think it strange that some people would be anti-tutor because they think it might increase the gap between the haves and have nots. Does this mean they think it is preferable for the upper end achievers to be “dumber,” so the lower end doesn’t feel bad or left behind?</p>
<p>Yeah, a year ago, my kid who has a degree from Brown and at that point, had 1 1/2 years of grad school at MIT under her belt, was hired as a tutor for low income children in Cambridge and Somerville, MA to go into their homes and tutor them on academics, funded by the government. The tutoring company paid my D $20/hour.</p>
<p>My parents are living abroad right now, with my youngest sister still in high school. In India, this type of school arrangement is quite common. In fact, during “prep weeks” for exams, most teachers tell their kids not to bother to come to school at all, just to study at home and (for most of them) get tuition. My sister has learning issues and having subject-specific tutors is a godsend for her - she is getting As and Bs for the first time in her life. However, many of her friends who also spend 4-5hrs each day after school getting tutored are excellent students in the own right - but it is very standard to hire a tutor for every subject, and have a different one come each day for several hours. Obviously, in India it is much less expensive, but my parents are still spending approximately $25k/yr on tuition, and would like to bring this model back with them to the states for my sister’s final two years of high school (as she has truly blossomed under it) but it is clearly a much more expensive proposition here.</p>