Carmen Fariña's grandson has a tutor

She cited her experience with her 10-year-old grandson, who she said worshiped the high school boy her daughter had hired to tutor him. “Charlie goes like this” — she mimicked an expression of rapt attention — “every time Abe walks into the room,” she said. (Ms. Fariña’s frequent references to her grandson have become a running joke among principals.)
Chancellor Carmen Fariña Changes New York City Schools’ Course

American parents spend $7 billion annually on tutoring, in some cases as much as $400 an hour, to reassure themselves that they are giving their children every advantage in the academic rat race, and research on the impact of tutoring backs them up.
Closing the Math Gap for Boys

I was talking recently to a member of the school board here, who told me s/he didn't mind hiring tutors, but s/he did mind hiring tutors for "basic education."

That makes two members of our school board, that I know of, who pay tutors to teach their children at home. (Last year the then-board president told the administration, on camera, that he had hired a math tutor for his daughter.)

I don't know whether the other three members of the board employ tutors. I'm guessing two of them do. If they haven't hired tutors already, they will, because everyone does.

Our current superintendent's take on the matter: the reason Irvington parents hire tutors is "culture."

That's what his predecessor thought, too.

Her observation -- this is close to a direct quotation -- was "Everyone knows Westchester parents hire tutors because they push their children to get ahead."

I always get my back up, hearing this.

What is it about my culture that makes me waste money on tutors, exactly?

And how is my culture any business of yours, anyway?

And why am I, the parent with the supposedly wonky culture, the focus of analysis?

I don't think I know a single parent, in my district, whose children went through all 13 years of K-12 without tutors, and all but one hired tutors because their children were having trouble, not because their children were at the top of their class but the parents wanted more.

Just one parent I know arguably fell into the "culture" category, but even that parent wasn't hiring tutors because of her culture. Pushing her kids to get ahead because of her culture, yes. Hiring tutors to do the job, no. Hiring tutors was simple realism. She had worked in the schools herself, and was matter of fact about their failings. Rely on your public school for the basics, she told me; for anything beyond the basics, hire a tutor.

That's not culture.

That's survival of the fittest. Her household had assessed the situation they found themselves in, and they had adapted.

My question is: when did this happen?

When did it become taken for granted that kids--all kids--have trouble learning at school, and the solution is for parents to hire tutors?

Echoing my board member, I don't actually mind if (some) parents are hiring tutors just so long as the superintendent minds and is working to reduce the need for tutors.

But he doesn't and he isn't.

Ditto for Carmen Farina, apparently.

Computerized teaching: the feedback gap

Yet another breathless account of the wonders of computerized learning appears in this weekend's New York Times Magazine in an article entitled "The Machines are Taking Over: advances in computerized tutoring are testing the faith that human contact makes for better learning."

The article opens with a scene of an actual human being tutoring a fellow species member. While her tutee works on a problem (calculating average driving speed), the tutor provides lots of interactive feedback. Neil Heffernan, the tutor's fiance, catalogued the various different types of feedback she gave under such categories as “remind the student of steps they have already completed,” “encourage the student to generalize,” “challenge a correct answer if the tutor suspects guessing”). According the the article, Heffernan then "incorporated many of these tactics into a computerized tutor," which he spent nearly two decades refining. Now called ASSISTments, it is used by by more than 100,000 students "in schools all over the country." The article describes the experience of one of these 100,000 students with the program's interactive feedback:

Tyler breezed through the first part of his homework, but 10 questions in he hit a rough patch. “Write the equation in function form: 3x-y=5,” read the problem on the screen. Tyler worked the problem out in pencil first and then typed “5-3x” into the box. The response was instantaneous: “Sorry, wrong answer.” Tyler’s shoulders slumped. He tried again, his pencil scratching the paper. Another answer — “5/3x” — yielded another error message, but a third try, with “3x-5,” worked better. “Correct!” the computer proclaimed.

In other words, it's the same old binary right-or-wrong feedback that nearly every educational software program has been using for decades. As the article notes:

In contrast to a human tutor, who has a nearly infinite number of potential responses to a student’s difficulties, the program is equipped with only a few. If a solution to a problem is typed incorrectly — say, with an extra space — the computer stubbornly returns the “Sorry, incorrect answer” message, though a human would recognize the answer as right.

True, the program is still a work in progress. But what's being refined, according to the article, isn't the feedback. Rather, it's the program's ability to detect when a student is getting bored, frustrated, or confused (via facial expression reading software, speed and accuracy of responses, and special chairs with posture sensors "to tell whether students are leaning forward with interest or lolling back in boredom."):

Once the student’s feelings are identified, the thinking goes, the computerized tutor could adjust accordingly — giving the bored student more challenging questions or reviewing fundamentals with the student who is confused.

Or "flashing messages of encouragement... or... calling up motivational videos recorded by the students’ teachers."

Also being refined is the "hint" feature, which users click on when stumped. Human beings (particularly teachers) track common wrong answers and have other human beings (particularly students) come up with helpful hints. These hints are then incorporated into the next generation of ASSISTments.

Cognitive Tutor, a more established software program that is "used by 600,000 students in 3,000 school districts around the country," also limits its feedback to hints and right-or-wrong responses.  And it, too, is being refined based on data from human users:

Every keystroke a student makes — every hesitation, every hint requested, every wrong answer — can be analyzed for clues to how the mind learns.

Ultimately, this data will be put to use not to refine feedback on particular student responses, but to help decide how to space out material and schedule periodic reviews.

But it's carefully tailored feedback on particular responses by particular students that makes human tutoring--the inspiration for all these programs--as powerful is it is.

In my earlier post on Cognitive Tutor, I wrote that programming sufficiently perspicuous feedback for mathematical problems "strikes me as even more prohibitive" than the feedback I labored for years to provide in my GrammarTrainer program. Last night I ran this impression past a mathematician friend of mine who cares a lot about effective math instruction. She emphatically concurs.

When it comes to educational software developers--as opposed to educational software users--there is some somewhat perspicuous feedback on whether their answers (answers to students' educational needs) are on track. As I write earlier, that feedback isn't particularly encouraging.

(Cross-posted at Out In Left Field).

help desk help desk help desk help desk help desk help help help

arrghh

First of all: once again, I'm sorry to be MIA -- I'm looking forward to becoming a regular on my own blog some time again soon.

Second: help! help!

C's second calculus test came back today: a disappointment, and a Bad Sign. And I am fresh out of enthusiasm for dealing with another year of high school math. Meaning: I am fresh out of enthusiasm for dealing with high school math teaching and high school math grading and high school math hiring of high school math tutors to remediate high school math grading and high school non-learning of high school math and on and on and on and then further on and on some more.

I'm done.

Also: calculus tutors are few and far between. I found only one last year, and the lone session he had with C. didn't help. Other parents have told me they couldn't find calculus tutors, either, and for years I've been hearing things like: "My son did well in BC Calculus. We were lucky because his father can teach it." As I recall, the mom who told me her husband could re-teach BC Calculus at home also told me that her husband's first cousin was an economist who had won the Nobel Prize. I'm pretty sure I'm not making that up.

Nobody in this house can teach calculus. I haven't even finished taking algebra 2, and Ed has forgotten the calculus courses he took in high school and college and doesn't care to revisit them.

So here we are.

Also - and this is a repeat - last year's math class was a total, effing disaster. The teacher was and is seriously ill but is still teaching, and the kids were and are dropping like flies. A huge percentage of last year's AP Calculus AB students got 1s on the AP test. Ones. And when I say "huge percentage," I mean eighty-five or ninety percent: the guy broke the bell curve. This was the teacher C. had for pre-calc, so C. is bringing to this year's calculus course an epic level of non-preparedness.

The teacher C. has this year is supposed to be fantastic and in fact told us he was fantastic on Back to School Night (he actually said: "I am it," which was exhilarating at the time), but if the grades are not great then the learning is not great, either. Fantastic is as fantastic does.

Ed is thinking we should just transfer C. to AP Stat (or maybe it wouldn't even be AP Stat - maybe just "Stat Honors," a class in which, according to C., students recently took a test on bar charts after completing a bar chart project) and be done with it.

That's pretty much how I feel, too, but it leaves the problem of algebra 2 and calculus, neither of which C. will have learned in high school -- and neither of which I want him taking in college since he'll likely be attending a school with kids who are a lot better than he is in math. At this point it is crystal clear to me that there is no reason on Earth to take a math course in college, pay for it, get a bad grade in it, and not learn any math. And I'm thinking the same principle holds true for high school. Why spend a single second of your (child's) life in a non-required math course so he can not learn math?

Last data point: C. did fine on the first test in the class and thought he did well on this test, too. He did great on the diagnostic test going in, and is doing well in physics. His mistakes on this test appear to be mostly "careless errors" (I have a whole new take on the nature of careless error thanks to the SAT) and a failure to follow correct notation, etc. In short, he appears to understand the material, not that I would know.

Of course, if that's the case then he needs more practice - but how do we swing that? The teacher doesn't seem to use a textbook, and I'm not going to be able to scrounge useful practice sets this go-round as I did for the 3 years when C. was in middle school.

(Could I talk to the teacher? Why, yes indeed I could talk to the teacher. But seeing as how talking to a math teacher has yielded exactly zero results over lo these many years, talking to the teacher wasn't my first impulse. Writing a help desk post was my first impulse.)

So...any thoughts?

We had a great, great precalculus tutor last spring at the very end of the school year; if we'd hired him at the beginning of last year, C. might have learned pre-calculus. We could hire him again (I assume) and decree that this year C is actually going to learn pre-calculus, which means we could pay tuition for C. to study bar charts at his Jesuit high school and pay tutoring fees for him to study pre-calculus here at home --- who says Americans have to de-leverage?! If you've got kids in school and you want them to learn math, deleveraging is not for you!

Or....or what?

What else is out there?

He could enroll in a community college precalculus course -- when?

Now? While he's in high school? (While he's in high school commuting 15 miles there and back every day?)

Then take calculus over the summer?

Another question: are there solid precalculus and calculus courses online? I took all of the ALEKS geometry course and part of the ALEKS Algebra 1 course, and as much as I want to like ALEKS, as much as I do like the tone and feel of the site, I don't think ALEKS replaces a good teacher or a good textbook. But do others out there think that might be the way to go?

What about online schools and colleges? I know there are universities that offer online math courses that kids take when they've been expelled or can't physically attend their local schools for some reason. Is that a possibility? Any recommendations?

And while we're on the subject, can anyone out there explain to me how in this country does a smart student with no discernible learning, attentional, motivational, or emotional difficulties whose talents and interests lie in history/social science actually learn some damn math?

What does it take?

$39,000 for tuition - $35,000 for tutors

Siddharth Iyer spent eight Mays cramming for finals, first at Stuyvesant High School and then at Columbia University.

Nine years later, it is still crunch time for Mr. Iyer, a top tutor at Ivy Consulting Group, as his clients face a deluge of end-of-year exams. “He’s been prepping my son all week,” said the mother of one, a senior at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx, speaking on the condition that she not be named because Riverdale discourages both tutoring and talking to reporters.

“Prepping” — in this case for an oral exam in Riverdale’s notorious Integrated Liberal Studies, an interdisciplinary class laden with primary sources instead of standard textbooks — did not start the week before the exams, the mother pointed out. She said she had paid Mr. Iyer’s company $750 to $1,500 each week this school year for 100-minute sessions on Liberal Studies, a total of about $35,000 — just shy of Riverdale’s $38,800 tuition.

Last year, she said, her tutoring bills hit six figures, including year-round SAT preparation from Advantage Testing at $425 per 50 minutes; Spanish and math help from current and former private school teachers at $150 an hour; and sessions with Mr. Iyer for Riverdale’s equally notorious interdisciplinary course Constructing America, at $375 per 50 minutes.

Push for A’s at Private Schools Is Keeping Costly Tutors Busy
By JENNY ANDERSON
Published: June 7, 2011

Elite New York schools like Riverdale and Dalton hire teachers with Ph.Ds -- not Ed.Ds^*-- in the fields they teach. Very likely, what has happened here is that these teachers have created advanced college-level courses high school students can't handle.

We need micro-schools.

^* When we looked at private schools 3 years ago, we found that the math teachers in nearly every private school had Masters degrees in education, not math.

back to the future with Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch writing in today's Times:

If every child arrived in school well-nourished, healthy and ready to learn, from a family with a stable home and a steady income, many of our educational problems would be solved.

Waiting for a School Miracle
By DIANE RAVITCH
Published: May 31, 2011

I can tell you definitively that a child arriving at school well-nourished, healthy and ready to learn from a family with a stable home and a steady income does not solve the educational problem of a high school junior needing to learn precalculus inside his actual school.

how much does a B on a precalculus final cost?

Approximately $500 for private tutoring at $100/hour.

Now we'll see how much it costs to pay said tutor to re-teach precalculus over the summer.

help desk - precalculus
lsquared on what you must know to take calculus
Crimson Wife's online tutoring recommendation

Courtney James - math tutoring

Crimson Wife writes:

I have heard really high praise for Courtney James as an online math tutor. 

update: For some reason, the link works for me only when I cut and paste the address into my browser, so here it is: http://mathperfect.net/Tutoring.aspx

update update:

Andy writes:

The link is broken because there is a trailing non-breaking space in the link (it ends Tutoring.aspx%20 instead of .aspx)

Thanks!

time with children

Don't ask me how it happened, but recently, in my travels, I came across the Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey. To analyze American Time Use, the Bureau uses an Activity Lexicon (pdf file), a 39-page list of things people do. 

Under sleeping, for example, the Bureau includes the following options:

sleeping
waking up
falling asleep
dreaming
dozing off
cat napping
napping
getting some shut-eye
getting up
dozing

Not sleeping is also a possibility:

insomnia
lying awake
tossing and turning
counting sheep

Two and a half pages are devoted to subcategory 01: Caring For and Helping HH Children.^* Reading the list gave me a happy feeling:

01 Physical care for hh children
02 Reading to / with hh children
03 Playing with hh children, not sports
04 Arts and crafts with hh children
05 Playing sports with hh children
06 Talking with/listening to hh children

And so on. Time with children.

Subcategory 02 -- Activities Related to HH Children's Education -- brought me up short:

01 Homework (hh children)
helping hh child with homework
signing hh child's homework log
reviewing hh child's homework
checking hh child's homework for completion
helping hh child with a school project
picking up hh child's books/assignments
quizzing hh child before a test

and:

02 Meetings and school conferences (hh children)
observing hh child's class
meeting with guidance counselor of hh child
attending hh child's parent-teacher conference
meeting with principal of hh child
attending hh child's back-to-school night
talking to / with hh child's tutor
meeting w/school psychologist of hh child
meeting with hh child's tutor
talking with teachers of hh child
attending hh child's school open house
attending a PTA meeting
meeting w/school speech pathologist of hh child

and:

04 Waiting associated with hh children's education
waiting to meet with hh child's teacher

And that's it, the entire list apart from a one-line subcategory dedicated to home schooling of HH children. Six categories for helping with HH child's homework, 2 categories for dealing with HH child's tutor, another 4 categories for spending time on HH child's other school-related challenges and traumas (meeting with principal of hh child; meeting with school psychologist of hh child; meeting w/school speech pathologist of hh child...) Plus an entire category consecrated to time spent waiting to meet with hh child's teacher. Talk about fresh hell.

Where are the good parts?

Where is the "hh children's education" equivalent of "listening to hh child sing/recite" and "hearing about hh child's day," both of which appear under the heading "Caring For and Helping HH Children"?

Where is subcategory 05: discussing school's program to accelerate hh child's learning with school personnel?

Or subcategory 06: vetting hh child's merit aid award offers with admissions officers?

Tutors come up elsewhere in the lexicon as well. Under "Telephone calls to / from paid child or adult care providers," the Bureau lists three activities:

talking on phone to day care provider
talking on phone to a tutor
talking on phone to a babysitter

Tutors crop up again under Childcare Services:

01 Using paid childcare services
hiring a nanny or babysitter paying for lessons, instructions
paying for daycare
paying for tutorial services
checking out daycare facility
hiring a tutor
paying for summer camp
paying for after school care program
talking to / with the daycare provider
meeting with daycare providers
talking to / with the camp counselor
talking to / with babysitter

Finally - and this took me by surprise - tutors appear in Category 04, Subcategory 02: Activities Related to Nonhh Children's Education. In Category 04 we find the American people engaging in all of the aforementioned parental Activities on behalf of other people's children:^**

observing nonhh child's class
meeting w/school speech pathologist of nonhh child
observing nonhh child's class
meeting with guidance counselor of nonhh child
attending non-hh child's parent-teacher conference
meeting with principal of nonhh child
attending non-hh child's back-to-school night
talking to / with nonhh child's tutor
meeting w/school psychologist of nonhh child
meeting with nonhh child's tutor
talking with teachers of nonhh child
attending nonhh child's school open house
attending PTA meeting


I wonder what Activities Related to HH Children's Education will look like in 2020?

I'd like to see a new activity on the list: visiting private, parochial, charter, and public schools to decide where to spend your child's tuition vouchers.


^* HH = household

^**see Anonymous for an explanation

nice work if you can get it

$60 - $80K

daryl-michelle on constructivist math in a wealthy district

In the wealthier districts like mine parents get tutors for their kids, or become de facto tutors. This is never taken into account when these districts brag about their quality and test scores. This is our 2nd year of constructivist math, 3rd grade, and its been a nightmare for certain kids (and their parents), with hours-long homework sessions resulting in still-failing grades (or non-grades, we use "indicators" here, I suspect, to cover up for this math...). The school is very willing to refer parents to tutors who charge $40/hr while pretending each kid is the "only one" struggling, but even before this every teacher who wanted to tutor gets booked all summer. I cannot tell how constructivist our math classes are in practice, but the materials for the program definitely expects it to be taught that way. And it is everywhere -"socratic circles" are in middle school social studies and english classes, in lieu of teaching, and my shy daughter can never come up with anything to say. But then our high school mathematics program mentions using Bloom's Taxonomy, which I do not fully comprehend but its supposed to encompass cognitive, affective and psychomotor areas of learning. Huh? How about just teaching math and we'll worry about the rest. Home schooling is looking better and better...

comment posted on Constructivist selection bias

Been there, done that.

no parent hires a constructivist tutor

Just saying.

Gabriela has a problem

If you've time to comment on this Flypaper post, you should.

accountable

TO THE PARENT/GUARDIAN:

My view of education (by Mr. Rydberg, retired math teacher; adopted by Mr. Pearson.)
Since only about 3% of a child’s first 18 years of life is spent in school, I believe a child’s education is the primary responsibility of the parent(s); my role is to support and assist in that endeavor. Although I am committed to work hard, your student cannot do well without your help. You are crucial and indispensable. With these commitments in place, the success of your child will be a delight to us all. But, you are the key, without you, (checking homework and helping prepare for tests; providing a quiet place and time to study; being accountable for results; making time to discuss school work; and helping with organization), their success will be limited.

I left a comment about parents (re)teaching math on Curriculum Matters.

The math tutor I know told me: "I get the call in 5th grade."

5th grade.

That's when the highly educated parents whose children he tutors max out their reteaching skills.

If parents are crucial and indispensable to their children's math education, the only children learning math are going to be the ones whose parents can afford to hire tutors.

parents are responsible for results
CA Math Frameworks: parents must be "involved" in math education at all grade levels
CA math framework: Responsibilities of Teachers, Students, Parents, Administrators
parents are the problem
outsourcing to parents

CT Coalition for World Class Math
NJ Coalition for World Class Math
PA coalition for World Class Math
United States Coalition for World Class Math
Parents' Group Wants to Shape Math Standards
Common Core Standards: Who Made the List?

Barry on retrofitting a bad curriculum

However, the question still remains: if you've got a 'lemon,' in the form of an ineffective school or curriculum, then what?

Well, what did you do? You taught your son at home. That's reteaching but can also be called tutoring. I did the same with my daughter. Was it effective? I think so, but I resented having to do it. I got spoiled when my daughter had good teachers in 7th and 8th grades in math. I felt guilty not going through the work with her until I realized that "normal" mean the child understands it by going to school and learning it.

When things are abnormal, after a while it gets to be too much. If there's a good private school around and the parents can afford it, that's the option some seek (as you did).

In terms of other students I tutor, as Anne Dwyer said, if you can identify weak areas that are holding up learning, yes it's effective. In terms of retrofitting a bad curriculum, it's just about impossible as an independent tutor. The parents would have to be willing to have their child take an alternative course. In essence, that's what parents are doing when they send their children to Kumon or Sylvan, etc. Those are schools. So the child is put in the position of going to school twice, and the parents penalized by having their taxes go to waste, and having to shell out more money for the learning centers.

retrofitting a bad curriculum: that is a fantastically useful phrase.

That's a basic public school concept: we'll spend millions on this lousy math curriculum the parents can't stand and we'll "supplement."

Win - win!


Welcome to Grand Canyon

how many tutors in Palo Alto?

Anonymous posts a link:

Almost 60 percent of Palo Alto parents supplement their children's math education through private tutors, extra workbooks and other means, mostly because they feel Palo Alto classes aren't challenging enough, according to results of a district survey released this week.

The district conducted an online survey of about 1,200 elementary school parents, and will compare its results with another survey taken next spring, after students have spent a year learning the district's new Everyday Mathematics curriculum.

During the debates over the controversial Everyday Math program, adopted as the district's new curriculum in April, many parents said Everyday Math is confusing and doesn't teach basic math skills. Parents frequently said they would have to supplement their children's math education.

Under the current curriculum, 62.8 percent of parents said their children don't need extra help in math, the survey says. But 57.2 percent said they provide supplemental math work anyway, mostly in the form of extra practice materials like workbooks or software, or regular math tutoring by a sibling or parent.

About 6.5 percent of parents said they hired a private math tutor, and 21.6 percent said their children attend a private math program like Kumon or Score.

A majority of parents who supplement their children's math education — 51 percent — said a "main reason" they do so is because their child needs to be more challenged in math, and 42.9 percent said a main reason was because their child enjoys math.

Former school board member Mandy Lowell, who has been critical of the district's adoption of Everyday Math, said boredom with math has been a "perennial problem" here. Palo Alto students are the sons and daughters of engineers and scientists who enjoy math, and have passed their love for the subject on to their children, she said, but the program focuses more on "supermarket math."

Most Palo Alto parents supplement kid's math, saying subject is too easy

They do what they do.

Anne Dwyer on what tutoring can achieve (& who needs tutoring & why)

Ok, here's what I see from the trenches.

First, I think I see the big picture because I:
have a special ed student in pre algebra
have a daughter in regular 6th grade math
teach remedial math in college
tutor bright but struggling high school boys in math
have just finished 8 credits of graduate mathematics

I could write a whole long post, but I'd get bored in the middle and delete it. So here goes with the conclusion:

1. Certain school districts (mine) believe in good curricula and qualified teachers. (see the exception below) This combination makes all the difference in the world. The highly qualified teachers know what the students need to learn in math, and will find a way to do the direct instruction. (The exception in my district is, of course, elementary school.)

2. I have tutoring students in other districts who use good curricula but have poorly qualified teachers and students in districts with highly qualified teachers and poor curricula. The boys I am tutoring had a very solid foundation in basic math and are still struggling. The good news is a good tutor can fill in the holes quite easily.
very small.

3. All of my professors at the university that I attend use the direct instruction method. They go over every proof in the book in detail (even though the proof is in the book) and they give solutions to every problem they assign.

chemprof on what tutoring can achieve

I'll semi-agree with Kate. A few years ago, we implemented tutoring by the course TAs for students who were really struggling, usually because of inadequate preparation or miserable math skills. We found we had to put in a "miss two sessions and you lose your slot" policy, as struggling students also often blew off the tutoring session, partly I suspect because it was free.

Tutoring can work really well for a student who needs to see the material again, and who comes to the session having looked over her notes and with questions. There, I've seen 30-60 minutes with the tutor each week changing a low C into a mid-range B (or even in one extreme case, a student who had failed twice ending up with an A!) It can be nearly useless for a student who comes with nothing, hasn't looked at anything, and isn't even sure where to start. Of course, I'm also talking about college students, where "taking responsibility for your own learning" is actually appropriate!

I'm very interested in this question - thanks so much for taking the time to comment.

Based entirely in personal experience, I've come to the conclusion that tutoring is 'bad' -- i.e. it's a bad model for learning (& teaching). It's like buying a lemon and then taking it to the shop a whole lot.

However, the question still remains: if you've got a 'lemon,' in the form of an ineffective school or curriculum, then what?

How well can tutoring work when there's no other option?

the unwritten rule

from Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work by Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, and Robert Eaker:

Education has developed its own ... tradition of unwritten rules or norms that impact the day-to-day workings of schools across the United States. Like baseball, these norms are not only unwritten, they are largely unexamined. They simply represent "the way we do things here." Someone entering the profession as a new teacher in a traditional school will soon discover the unwritten rules, the way things are to be done. If those rules or norms were written, here is what they might say:

[snip]

Our job is to teach, and the students' job is to learn. [italics mine]

Hence: tutors.


lgm on upstate NY
it's good to be rich
all things PLC

Scarsdale tutors

I was just talking to a guy who is related to a Scarsdale grade school teacher.

Scarsdale teachers start tutoring Scarsdale students for pay as early as second grade.


Scarsdale tutors, part 1

it's good to be rich

I was out for a run with C. and the dogs, and, since we don't have sidewalks, passing cars were having to stop so I could clear the dogs off to the side of the road.

After a late model European sedan slowed for us, C. said, "That was Ms. Xxxx."

Math teacher in the district.^*

"Really?" I said. "She's probably here to tutor somebody." I was joking.

"She tutors so-and-so," C. said matter of factly.

Sure enough. When we got to so-and-so's house, there was the late model European sedan parked out front.

Funny how you can search far and wide in the effective schools literature and never find an expert recommending that teachers set up shop as private tutors for their own district's students.


^* for passersby: roughly 1900 children in K-12, per pupil spending $26,718 rising to $27,722 next year