New York City: $35,000/year for private tutors outcome of grades race

[FLPanhandle]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/education/08tutors.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me

“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.


Private SAT tutors have been de rigueur at elite New York private schools for a generation, but the proliferation of subject-matter tutors for students angling for A’s is a newer phenomenon that is beginning to incite a backlash. Interviews with parents, students, teachers, administrators, tutors and consultants suggest that more than half of the students at the city’s top-tier schools hire tutors, an open secret that the schools seem unable to stop.


What is most troubling to those trying to curtail academic tutoring is that instead of remedial help for struggling students, more and more of it seems to be for those trying to get ahead in the intensely competitive college-application race. Gone are the days of a student who was excellent at math and science just getting by in English and history; now, everyone is expected to be strong in everything (including fencing, chess, woodworking and violin).



I've heard of this in some Asian countries but didn't expect to see "Tiger Mom" type tutoring going on so prevalently here in the U.S. Holy Crap.

[Synicus Maximus]

1. Why is this a bad thing? If the parents can afford to strengthen the

academics of their kid why not?

[aquart]

2. It does NOT strengthen academics.

I've taught the Princeton course. Most of it is test trickery.

And nobody gains knowledge from excerpts.

[FLPanhandle]

3. Well, from the article

"And while the schools encourage students to work with their teachers instead of racking up tutoring bills, parents said teachers were often unavailable — because they have taken second jobs tutoring students at another school (they are prohibited from tutoring for pay at their own schools)."

It is taking teachers away from their nonpaying students and sending them to privately paying parents.