Tutoring at Private Schools

[Anonymous]

I spoke to a LS parent at a private we are considering for 2010 and was somewhat surprised to hear about the significant amount of tutoring sought out by many parents in order to keep their kids accountable to various academic expectations. Given that private school education is 30K a year, it would seem to follow that a more focused interest in keeping the kids up to speed would be a working assumption for most families/parents. Should I expect to shell out an extra 3 - 4 K for after school tutoring, in addition to the premium education I am already paying for? Seems very wrong.

[Anonymous]

I don't think the schools expect you to do so, and it is not necessary. However, there are some good reasons for it. 1. If your child is several grades ahead of the school in an area (math is most common), and you are trying to feed a thirst that a school can't be expected to fill, you might wish to tutor. 2. If a child has missed a significant amount of material due to illness, or has changed school systems, you might wish to tutor. For example, my DC switched from public, w/ zero foreign language, to private where kids had quite a few years of foreign language, so we use a tutor to support.

You may think it is up to the school to fill every need - for either acceleration or remediation - of every single student, but if so you've got a hard lesson coming. And you too might decide that, like music lessons, you find it to be useful for your goals and those of your child.

[Anonymous]

Righto, PP. Lots of parents spend oodles on sports programs outside of school, because PE is not filling the whole desire. Most think nothing of doing this, and don't expect the school to train little Suzie to be Lindsay Vonn. For some reason parents freak out when they think they might have to pay for anything extra, academically. But to me there isn't such a big difference. It is up to the choice of the family. So chill out OP, and resolve to do what you think is best.

[Anonymous]

PP To be fair to the OP, while I think that the two reasons above given for tutoring are real, the more honest answer is that parents are competitive and aren't expected to get tutor, but rather everyone keeps upping the ante for everything and tutoring is just one more example of that. Let's call a spade a spade after all.

[Anonymous]

Also, lots of busy parents don't want to fight with their kids in the little time they have together, so turn the academic arm wrestling over to a tutor.

[Anonymous]

Like most parenting issue, trust yourself to decide what's best.

No independent school will suggest that you get a tutor for your DC unless he/she is way behind or has a special need. For students doing just fine, most will probably slightly discourage it in the elementary grades because they don't want kids to burn out on learning. But every child and family is different and its up to us to decide what's best for them.

In our case, my 4th grader loves reading/writing. For a couple years, we've spent a $2-3K/year indulging her desire for riding lessons. When she expressed a desire to pursue an interest in literature last year, we got her a tutor. Yes, it's just reading and writing, but the tutor we found is a great teacher and DC is excited by the extra work. It would never make sense for any school to dive as deeply in to the subject or assign as much extra work as they are doing. Supporting an intellectual interest seems like a no-brainer when we wouldn't think twice about letting her be on a traveling soccer team or enter riding competitions that involve substantial time and money. As long as she shows a passion and a desire to work hard at something, we're going to find a way to help her. That's our job as parents.

[Anonymous]

ummmmm...I think you've hit on kind of a sensitive topic OP. I know we had to scrape to put the $30k tuition together. I thought it was absurd that so many people in my daughter's school had tutors on top of that. I really thik $30k should be enough and if the kids need help...I think their teachers should help them...and if they need too much help...maybe it's not the right school for the child. The one time I did break down was for SAT prep...I paid for that because I wanted the kid to do well...she did...she's at an Ivy.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks all to those who responded constructively.

The parent I spoke with at the private we're considering was describing her second-grader. And the 7 year old was receiving academic tutoring, not sports or music extra curricular activities. This child does not have learning disabilities, but given the nature of the academic program at this school, she fell behind, and now the parents are paying for a tutor.

And fwiw, I am a sahm, so I do have the time and interest to keep on top of things, if there were deficits in my child's ability to learn on target, or if the school was lagging in its level of instruction. My query was really, I suppose, somewhat a naive response to the fact that many families hire tutors to offer their children a competitive edge, as one pp noted.

[Anonymous]

I'm the PP w/ the "2 reasons." We have had a couple of tutors, as I said, but it is not because the ante has been upped. I have no clue about how many people have tutors in my kids' classes. It was never relevant. It is just about what I feel is best for my children.

[Anonymous]

17:19 Yuck.

[Anonymous]

OP, welcome to one of private schools' dirty little secrets: they don't generally teach to the top or the bottom tiers very well. So the bottom needs tutors to "keep up," and the top needs tutors for "enrichment," or to "stay competitive" -- with whom, I'm not sure, public GT or magnets, probably. We have been dissatisfied with our private middle school for the latter reason and may supplement, and we resent having to do so given the tuition we've already paid.

[Anonymous]

17:39 This is absolutely not meant to be snarky. How did you know that your dc needed tutoring in order to be competitive with the G&T programs? Was is just a sense that the work load wasn't enough or from friends' children?

[Anonymous]

Everyone who is white in a public school is called "G+T"...give me a break that the privates need to keep up with the public school strivers.

[Anonymous]

PP, fair question. I meant to say my DC might need "enrichment," not that we need to "stay competitive" -- b/c I don't know what the public school standards are. I was only speculating that this might be other people's reason for using a tutor. I just know that my DC is always at or near the top of the class in his private (not one of the elites) and the work, to my mind, is not as stimulating as it could be. Our solution for now may be to ask a favorite teacher to do some extra things with him over the summer so that he stays interested in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Like most parenting issue, trust yourself to decide what's best.

No independent school will suggest that you get a tutor for your DC unless he/she is way behind or has a special need. For students doing just fine, most will probably slightly discourage it in the elementary grades because they don't want kids to burn out on learning. But every child and family is different and its up to us to decide what's best for them.

In our case, my 4th grader loves reading/writing. For a couple years, we've spent a $2-3K/year indulging her desire for riding lessons. When she expressed a desire to pursue an interest in literature last year, we got her a tutor. Yes, it's just reading and writing, but the tutor we found is a great teacher and DC is excited by the extra work. It would never make sense for any school to dive as deeply in to the subject or assign as much extra work as they are doing. Supporting an intellectual interest seems like a no-brainer when we wouldn't think twice about letting her be on a traveling soccer team or enter riding competitions that involve substantial time and money. As long as she shows a passion and a desire to work hard at something, we're going to find a way to help her. That's our job as parents.

"That's our job as parents". You might want to take your own advice and instead of hiring someone for your daughter to discuss and debate literature in depth, you actually, you know read the book , and then discuss it with her. Could you be any more lazy???