May 26, 2007

Tutoring for the Already Brainy

NY TIMES/WESTCHESTER WEEKLY DESK
By KATE STONE LOMBARDI (NYT)

ALLAN SCHNEIDER, a Westchester tutor, recently sat down with a 16-year-old high school junior from Chappaqua who had been sent to him for extra work in math for the SAT’s. After a few weeks, he found that she solved almost every problem correctly.

”I told her ‘you really don’t need this,’ and she said, ‘No, my Mom loves tutoring and I have to have more,”’ Mr. Schneider said. He called the girl’s mother and told her the girl did not need his help. A few days later, Mr. Schneider got a phone call from a private college counselor who had a client looking for a math tutor for her daughter. The daughter turned out to be the same teenager he had just turned away.

Years ago, with a very few exceptions, tutoring was for students who were floundering or failing. Today it is a booming industry, fueled by parental angst over the college admissions process, that helps not only children who are struggling, but also gilds the lily, moving ”B+” students to ”A” students, giving extra support to students enrolled in honors and Advanced Placement courses and propelling children with high test scores into the very top percentiles.

To be sure, remedial tutoring is still a huge part of the market. But in Westchester, especially in what Mr. Schneider calls ”the gold belt buckle of tutoring — Scarsdale, Greenwich and Chappaqua,” other tutoring flourishes. There is academic subject tutoring, tutoring for standardized tests, including Regents exams, SAT II’s (subject tests) and SAT’s and also ”support tutoring,” which gives help with organizing a child’s schedule, homework, papers and study habits.

Manhattan has long been the epicenter of the kind of parental competitiveness that surrounds everything from getting into the best preschool through the best college, but people familiar with the landscape say many of those practices are beginning to migrate to Westchester.

”It’s definitely becoming in the suburbs like it was three years ago in Manhattan,” said Lisa Jacobson, chief executive of Inspirica, a company that offers tutoring, test preparation and high school, college and graduate school admissions counseling. While Inspirica is based in Manhattan, Ms. Jacobson said 20 percent of her business is now in Westchester, and it is growing, fueled by anxiety over college admissions.

”In general these parents don’t know what to do,” she said of her new customers. ”They read about the valedictorian with the 1600’s who did not get in. People are trying to at least help their kids get to the level where they’re in line with everybody else. And then they go past that and try to get an edge.”
Tutors speak freely about their business, but parents of children who are being tutored are much more cautious. Parents who were willing to speak for this article would do so only on the condition that their names not be used. Some expressed worry that their children’s teachers would be offended by the use of private tutors. Others were sensitive about admitting that their children needed help to maintain good grades or stay in honors and advanced courses. One Rye mother said she didn’t want to ”reveal any advantage” she was using to get her son into college.

Filed under: Admin/Management,Home Schooling,Peer-Tutoring,Tutoring Practices

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