Peer tutoring can benefit tutor and student, but more often it is of benefit to neither. Some of the reasons include:

• tutor knows material, but can’t teach it
• tutor lacks maturity to work with peer
• student uncomfortable working with peer tutor
• peers are friends; don’t focus on subject.

In San Diego, the school board declined to approve a class in which students tutor other children with special needs, worrying that it might not be a real, academically rigorous class.

A valid concern.  One that also hints at the possibility the school is taking advantage of students. One parent and school district advisory committee member

argued that the Peer Tutoring class and other like it were “phantom classes” that allowed high schools to shoehorn teens into doing the work of employees.

The unaddressed question: What about the students who clearly need additional services?