The education experts at GreatSchools.net encourage parents to catch the problem early. “The most compelling reason to hire a tutor is if your child is having trouble in school. In this case, don’t delay seeking help.” Criteria for families considering a tutor include:

• grades don’t reflect the amount of effort being put in
• homework is incomplete or done incorrectly
• student exhibits a lack of confidence or low motivation
• misbehavior at school becomes an issue
• student is anxious or ill-prepared for tests

The article points out that many high school students would have been better off with earlier one-on-one tutoring intervention. As true as this may be, we say stop the recriminations and focus on the challenges facing your student today.

A professional tutor and well-managed tutoring program can gradually to fill past learning gaps while addressing your child’s immediate learning needs. As your student makes progress, you’ll see that it’s not just tutor time. It’s guilt-free tutor time!

Most times when I try to teach my children something – how to mow the lawn, do a budget or clean a toilet – I feel as if I have a positive or at least a neutral effect – with one big exception.

When I have tried to tutor my children in school, or simply help with homework, I often feel like Typhoid Mary. In most cases I have managed only to confuse them.

• 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?

With 42 percent of Americans believing there’s a “great need” for children to receive private outside tutoring (Newsweek poll), we thought you might find these notes on “shadow education” relevant, if not rather startling:

In BB&N study, “on average, tutored students spend approximately 10 percent of their routinely available time for homework and study with tutors; it may be as high as 25 percent for the top 100 student users of tutors.” That’s 2.3 to 5.6 hours with a tutor each week!

Market analysts at Bear-Stearns estimated that parents whose children are in the top and the bottom of their classes (21 percent of the total) are likely to seek tutoring.

In California, a 2002 Palo Alto high school poll revealed that 10.85 percent of math students receive paid-professional tutoring on a regular basis. Palo Alto’s Gunn High School, reported 16.4 percent in regular (including Algebra 1.1 and 1.2), 15.3 percent in advanced, 7 percent in honors and 3.7 percent in advanced placement math lanes regularly attend tutoring sessions.

A 2009 survey conducted by the Palo Alto elementary school district found that more than 57 percent of students receive supplemental math assistance outside of school.

A study found 77 percent of Korean students averaged 7.8 hours per week in private education. Parents of students with the highest achievement invested in private tutoring.

By now, you’ve probably figured out this illustration has something to do with the advantages of private, one-on-one tutoring. The bottom line is that, by its nature, group tutoring must operate in a less-productive, less-directed, and less-personalized fashion. Our article 20 Reasons to Choose an In-home Tutor includes a comparison chart that simply and factually lists the differences between these two vastly different approaches.

As the above analogy shows, students get the best results from one-on-one professional support. And, while each private session may cost more, families will spend less in total thanks to the faster progress over a short period of time.

That pretty much sums up the focus of our article, How to Make Tutoring Specific, Measurable and Actionable. Since so many tutoring programs sound good in theory, but fall far short in reality, we strongly recommend parents and students start by clarifying exactly what tutoring success looks like and what it will take to get there.

After completing this exercise, you will move beyond asking questions like, “Do you have a math tutor?” that open the door for sales representatives to sell you their assessments and one-size-fits-all programs. Instead, you will be bolstered by specific questions about how the provider’s tutoring program is going to address your child’s specific learning challenges in a timely fashion. You will also have the tools needed to track milestones, modify objectives, and measure for success.

Image from www.flickr.com/photos/night86mare/ / CC BY 2.0

When you choose TeamUP! Tutors’ managed in-home tutoring program, we follow the SMART process to prepare a personalized “Student Success Plan” for your child and then closely monitor that his or her progress matches all objectives.

Advantages of this goal-setting exercise include clear instructional recommendations matched to your child’s exact learning needs, realistic scheduling to achieve your specific goals, and a living document that all parties (parents, the student, and the tutor) can access at any time. The result is learning that stays on track, a student who gets the most out of every tutoring session, and goals that are met in a realistic and timely fashion.

If you would like us to prepare or update a “Student Success Plan” for your child, please ask. Our SMART planning process is offered as a free service to all clients.

If you’re considering in-home, online, center, peer, or any other type of tutoring, results-based research can help ease your confusion. In The Tutoring Revolution: Applying Research for Best Practices, Policy Implications, and Student Achievement researchers Edward E. Gordon, Ronald R. Morgan, Charles J. O’Malley, and Judith Ponticell review over 4,000 studies on tutoring spanning 30 years.

After comparing the results of tutoring in different settings, the team found that tutoring conducted in the student’s home yielded the best results over time. According to the authors, “Tutoring at the student’s home often maximizes long-term student achievement. Home-based tutoring allows remediation of student skills and helps parents improve the learning environment in the home.”

Another best practice closely tied to private tutoring was that students must “spend an adequate amount of time on task. Time is needed to assess which skills are missing, to change study habits, and to improve motivation.”

Of course, every tutor has to start somewhere, but not with a struggling student whose parents trust the company to provide qualified to help. There are plenty of good places for tutors to earn their stripes, but this is not one of them. For example, while working toward their teaching credential, a prospective tutor can gain experience by student teaching, volunteering at an after school homework club, or working as a college teaching assistant.

But what if the individual really, really knows the material? Say your neighbor is a calculus wizard who thinks it would be rewarding to explain the topic to others while earning some extra income on the side. While he may be a great guy and could even become an excellent tutor, without a solid teaching or tutoring track record, he is not qualified to provide the tools a struggling student needs for long-term success.

At TeamUP! Tutors, we have a saying that goes like this… knowing the material is not the same as knowing how to teach it. It’s a philosophy that has been reinforced time and again over our years in the business.

If you simply need a well-intentioned person to sit with your child and make sure the homework gets done, hire a babysitter for about $10/hour. If, on the other hand, you’re planning to shell out five to ten times that amount for serious academic support, do your due diligence to be absolutely certain your child works with a seasoned professional.

Simply by doing what was in the best interest of students (further reinforced by research), we suddenly found ourselves on the forefront of a tutoring revolution… or was that evolution? As far back as Aristotle, private tutors helped students achieve. According to Newsweek, “Tutoring was the world’s first pedagogical system, and all over America parents are deciding, If it was OK for Alexander the Great, it’s good enough for my kid.”

In addition to seeing parents shift their views about tutoring, we have also witnessed students change from viewing a tutor as a punishment or stigma to bragging about how their tutor is totally chill (their words, not mine).

Now imagine you’re a B-/C+ student who spends just as much time going to class, completing assignments, and studying for tests as your good friend who gets straight As. You might make the assumption that you’re not very smart when, in reality, your friend is getting a leg up from a private tutor.

From a different perspective, imagine you’re a teacher, patting yourself on the back because the vast majority of your students are excelling. Unbeknownst to you, this is due to outside tutoring, so you are likely to be under the impression that your lessons are incredibly effective for a majority of the class when, in fact, you’re missing the mark.

Now imagine a world with a level playing field where schools take ownership for making sure all students grasp all of the material and teachers are available to provide extra help during evenings and weekends. Since this world isn’t our reality, and academic standards are becoming even more rigorous, millions of parents are making tutoring a part of their annual household budget.

The bottom line is, when students are given extra time and help to truly master concepts, they perform better in school and are accepted by more prestigious colleges. Fair or not, professional tutors help students do their primary job. Learn.

Director of The Center for Developing Minds, and a board certified behavioral and developmental pediatrician, Korb tells parents that “One-on-one tutoring can help students with many types of learning challenges.” He also cautions that the tutor must be, “highly qualified to teach the material, listen carefully to your needs, provide you with a goal-driven plan, and establish a positive learning environment with your child.”

In the article How to Find the Perfect Tutor, Dr. Korb gives specific examples of how tutors can assist children who are disorganized, inattentive, under-confident, and oppositional. He also highlights bright kids who never needed to build study skills and are suddenly out of their depth when academic demands increase.

“If your child is having a hard time with school, it is imperative that you get involved in their education,” said Lauren Malone, a former elementary school teacher. “Go straight to the teacher and ask how you can help your child and what the teacher is willing to do to help them succeed in the classroom. Inquire about tutoring at school. Let your child know you are involved and that their education is important to you.”

There are signs that can serve as an early indication that your child might benefit from tutoring. For example, your child may make excuses as to why they have not done their homework as a way to avoid a subject he or she is struggling with.

Ms Dalisay offers some tips for finding the right tutor:

• Ask friends and your child’s teacher for recommendations
• Research alternative organizations. Several organizations offer informal tutoring services, often for less money.
• Check credentials carefully.

She also provides the following tips, all ones we applaud:

• Seek a child’s teachers as partners
• Include the child in the process
• Decide on your objective

Nearly all pediatricians (97.2%) follow standard guidelines for management of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ie, recommend medications such as Ritalin, Cylert, etc. In addition, most recommend environmental strategies such as more structure and one-on-one attention (85.6%) and an individual learning plan and tutoring (85.3%). More than half of pediatricians (57.0%) would also recommend psychotherapy. About one-fourth would recommend, as adjunctive therapies caffeine (29.5%), Yoga (24.5), or mind-body therapies such as hypnosis, relaxation or distraction (21.5). Fewer than 5% of pediatricians recommend other forms of CAM.

The Wall Street Journal article tells how tutors market themselves to attract the attention of students. Would this rap video work in the U.S.?

Summer Brain Drain: “Kids lose one to three months of learning”
http://school.familyeducation.com/summer/cognitive-processes/38453.html

Staunch Your Kid’s Summer Learning Loss
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8146912/

Summer Home Learning Recipes from the National Education Association
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/Recipes/index.html

Make learning a part of your everyday routine
http://school.familyeducation.com/summer/family-learning/36089.html

School leaders in Seaford, Del., had noticed for some time that very few average students took the most challenging courses in the town’s secondary schools. As was the case in most small school systems, many Seaford families did not expect much. Parents and teachers did not want to push kids beyond their limits.

But Seaford educators became convinced that with extra help, many more students could be taking algebra in middle school and college-level courses in high school. Four years ago, they began offering special tutoring, summer classes and Saturday classes. The number of Advanced Placement classes at Seaford High swelled from four to 14.

Here is another example of the impact of expectations on results.