How common is it for high schooler to have a tutor?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach high school math. Around 1/4 of my students have a math tutor. Another 1/4 have a parent who is helping with assignments.

What class? Have you surveyed them?

[Anonymous]

If you think a lot public school kids have tutors you should see private schools. It’s close to 100%.

The reason you see so many kids today with “high stats” is because people are using all of the help/advantages they can afford.

Nothing wrong with it but let’s be real that it is an advantage.

Also back in my day kids in the advanced and GT classes used to get together to study and work through problems. Maybe this has been replaced by tutoring sessions?

[Anonymous]

"A" tutor? Ha!
You mean several, each for their subject.

Tutoring is not a function of school achievement but of wealth, OP.

In my Bethesda neighborhood, composed of 50-50 public and private school kids, EVERYONE is tutored at some point. There is remedial tutoring, and acceleration tutoring. Therefore all kids are tutored. Their parents can afford it and since they are education-focused and very interested in reaching the best college admissions outcome... this is how it is.

I could go on, but that's the gist.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes I wonder if our public HS expects a lot of kids to have tutors and doesn't mind outsourcing some of the work. They can't meet everyone where they need it, so this fills the gap.

[Anonymous]

Are you getting online tutoring or in-person for high school kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are you getting online tutoring or in-person for high school kids?

In person. Once a week for an hour

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes I wonder if our public HS expects a lot of kids to have tutors and doesn't mind outsourcing some of the work. They can't meet everyone where they need it, so this fills the gap.

Absolutely. Kids often learn much more from their tutor than the teacher!

[Anonymous]

For what it's worth, we've had a lot of more success doing online math classes with AoPS than in person tutoring, and it's more efficient because no driving is required.

[Anonymous]

My senior has had math tutors since 7th grade but it’s because he struggles a lot in math. He also had a tutor in physics and chemistry because they involved math too. It’s been an expensive six years!

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks, everyone, for the responses. This has been very enlightening. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it but I feel like I've been living under a rock. We do have the means to get DS a tutor but just never occurred to us to get one because we didn't think he "needed" one. This is not to say things have always been smooth sailing but we have been fortunate that DS has always been good about self monitoring and hunkering down on his own when he needs to. As another poster mentioned, if a student is in advanced classes, it was assumed it's because they can handle it. I realize now that's a very old school way of thinking so absolutely no judgment placed on those parents who are doing all they can to give their kids an advantage. I also appreciated the comment about tutors getting deeper into the content and helping better prepare them for college.

This reminds of the time when I first discovered how many of DS' teammates on his travel team were getting private coaching on the side. Lol! Again, we were a little late to the party. Yes, we are fortunate to have the means to give our DC the advantages they need to help them be successful but neither DH nor I grew up wealthy, so we didn't have access to these types of opportunities so I guess we are somewhat ignorant to how common this is and how the game is played. Plus no one seems to openly talk about it IRL. Thank goodness for DCUM!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks, everyone, for the responses. This has been very enlightening. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it but I feel like I've been living under a rock. We do have the means to get DS a tutor but just never occurred to us to get one because we didn't think he "needed" one. This is not to say things have always been smooth sailing but we have been fortunate that DS has always been good about self monitoring and hunkering down on his own when he needs to. As another poster mentioned, if a student is in advanced classes, it was assumed it's because they can handle it. I realize now that's a very old school way of thinking so absolutely no judgment placed on those parents who are doing all they can to give their kids an advantage. I also appreciated the comment about tutors getting deeper into the content and helping better prepare them for college.

This reminds of the time when I first discovered how many of DS' teammates on his travel team were getting private coaching on the side. Lol! Again, we were a little late to the party. Yes, we are fortunate to have the means to give our DC the advantages they need to help them be successful but neither DH nor I grew up wealthy, so we didn't have access to these types of opportunities so I guess we are somewhat ignorant to how common this is and how the game is played. Plus no one seems to openly talk about it IRL. Thank goodness for DCUM!

We're immigrants and my husband is resolutely old school and very much "if you can't hack it on your own, too bad". But he's been forced to do something about his son's special needs. And because our son is the oldest, he's now much more willing to pay for tutors or extra support for his younger children, to accelerate them, even though they have no special needs. But it's been a long road. It doesn't come naturally to us. I too, learned a lot on DCUM!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks, everyone, for the responses. This has been very enlightening. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it but I feel like I've been living under a rock. We do have the means to get DS a tutor but just never occurred to us to get one because we didn't think he "needed" one. This is not to say things have always been smooth sailing but we have been fortunate that DS has always been good about self monitoring and hunkering down on his own when he needs to. As another poster mentioned, if a student is in advanced classes, it was assumed it's because they can handle it. I realize now that's a very old school way of thinking so absolutely no judgment placed on those parents who are doing all they can to give their kids an advantage. I also appreciated the comment about tutors getting deeper into the content and helping better prepare them for college.

This reminds of the time when I first discovered how many of DS' teammates on his travel team were getting private coaching on the side. Lol! Again, we were a little late to the party. Yes, we are fortunate to have the means to give our DC the advantages they need to help them be successful but neither DH nor I grew up wealthy, so we didn't have access to these types of opportunities so I guess we are somewhat ignorant to how common this is and how the game is played. Plus no one seems to openly talk about it IRL. Thank goodness for DCUM!

Two things, OP.

1. Lots of people do speak openly about tutoring. There is no stigma attached to it, so it's not something that needs to be kept hush-hush. In fact, since your son knows lots of kids who have tutors, that means people are talking about it.

2. You might want to reframe your thinking. If I told my friend whose kid has a tutor that mine has always been able "to hunker down" when needed, I would probably not hear anything else from my friend about academics.

[Anonymous]

My kids have tutors-much cheaper than private school and gets them ahead way more.
Honestly if a kid was self motivated they could learn all that on Khan academy..well maybe everything except essay writing.So if you need it to be free you can do that but would have to work on motivating your kid.

My kids tell all their friends that they have tutors-like "have to be home by 4:30-my tutor starts at 5"-not sure what the big deal is?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Thanks, everyone, for the responses. This has been very enlightening. I'm a bit embarrassed to admit it but I feel like I've been living under a rock. We do have the means to get DS a tutor but just never occurred to us to get one because we didn't think he "needed" one. This is not to say things have always been smooth sailing but we have been fortunate that DS has always been good about self monitoring and hunkering down on his own when he needs to. As another poster mentioned, if a student is in advanced classes, it was assumed it's because they can handle it. I realize now that's a very old school way of thinking so absolutely no judgment placed on those parents who are doing all they can to give their kids an advantage. I also appreciated the comment about tutors getting deeper into the content and helping better prepare them for college.

This reminds of the time when I first discovered how many of DS' teammates on his travel team were getting private coaching on the side. Lol! Again, we were a little late to the party. Yes, we are fortunate to have the means to give our DC the advantages they need to help them be successful but neither DH nor I grew up wealthy, so we didn't have access to these types of opportunities so I guess we are somewhat ignorant to how common this is and how the game is played. Plus no one seems to openly talk about it IRL. Thank goodness for DCUM!

Two things, OP.

1. Lots of people do speak openly about tutoring. There is no stigma attached to it, so it's not something that needs to be kept hush-hush. In fact, since your son knows lots of kids who have tutors, that means people are talking about it.

2. You might want to reframe your thinking. If I told my friend whose kid has a tutor that mine has always been able "to hunker down" when needed, I would probably not hear anything else from my friend about academics.

OP here. Appreciate the feedback. I did not mean to imply there was any stigma attached to it. My apologies if it came across that way. I was just surprised at my own ignorance and not understanding how common it was for students to have tutors and, if anything, made me wonder if we should get one for our DS. Like I said, it just hasn't come up amongst the parent groups. What I have heard was all secondhand through DS, which is why I thought I would as about it here, which ties into your second point. I don't know about other parent groups but we just don't talk about our kids' academics much at all other than the occasional "How is Larlo's school year going? "How is he liking high school?", etc. and we absolutely don't go around comparing our kids. My original question was more from a place of wondering ir are we missing out or if we are putting our kids at a disadvantage for not getting them a tutor in this, as another poster put it, academic pressure cooker environment we live in.

[Anonymous]

I think you'll find parents don't sit around comparing their kids. They do talk about classes, teachers and workload. In all those scenarios, the subject of a tutor could come up.