Posted on 09/02/2006 4:08:54 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Parents shell out big bucks for tutors
By Lisa Kassenaar
BLOOMBERG NEWS
Published September 2, 2006
When Casey Ravitz graduated in June from Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, she had spent 14 years in three private schools in New York City. For eight of those years, she had kept weekly appointments with $100-an-hour Manhattan tutors.
"I had a lot of friends who were being tutored, too," says Miss Ravitz, 18, an investment banker's daughter who moved to Chicago last month to attend DePaul University. "My last tutor wouldn't let me get away with anything. She was the most helpful person I've ever met."
In New York, where tuition at some private schools will top $30,000 this fall, parents are spending thousands of dollars more on one-on-one instruction. Some teens need extra coaching -- which can cost more than $500 an hour -- to get through chemistry or Franz Kafka.
Others seek help to nab the A's required for a seat at Harvard or Princeton universities, says Lisa Jacobson, 47, who started Inspirica Ltd. in 1983 in Manhattan and now employs more than 100 tutors.
About 75 percent of private high school graduates in New York have had some tutoring, says Sandy Bass, editor of Private School Insider, a New York newsletter published five times a year. Rising demand for homework help, which is distinct from prepping for the SAT college entrance exam, has led the city's tutoring companies to add teachers and services.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The way to fix it is to strengthen curriculum and improve the teacher quality. To do that, you have to purge entrenched liberal loons in educational establishment.
With decently challeging curriculum, it is difficult to manufacture grades with intensive tutoring, which, in many cases, inevitably concentrate on test-taking skills and mapping out problems which are likely to appear on the test, as time passes.
A man cannot leave a better legacy to the world than a well educated family. - Thomas Scott
Let parents assume their rightful roles in the community by getting meaninfully involved in their local school boards.
They still haven't learned that thowing money at their children is a substitute for good parenting; any more than throwing money at government or lobbies is a substitute for good citizenship.
The upside of this is that, perhaps, some people will manage to learn something during their formative years.
Too bad about those who can't afford tutors. They'll have to work that much harder.
Okay, what's "Franz Kafka"?
A Czech writer, one of the big names in Early 20 century European literature.
His novel is about human condition. Quiet philosophical in nature as far as I know. My personal opinion is that this is a material for even reasonably smart high school students. It would be too demanding. I think that most adults will have trouble appreciating what it meant to say.
Correction: Quiet Quite philosophical
Another correction: this is a material for --> this is not a material for
I guess I am not doing well today.:(
Gee, I can tutor you about Franz Kafka. This will be painless. You won't have to read any of us utterly depressing stories.
The world is a bizarre, depressing, unfair place where you can be put into limbo at any time, whether in an unfair trial or by waking up after having been turned into an insect. Picture a nightmare that never ends.
See, wasn't that easy? And you didn't have to read a word of his hideously depressing novels. The great thing is, all you have to do to avoid the world he wrote about is to turn to Jesus.
If you want to experience his world first hand, go over to DU, the virtual world that Franz Kafka's ideas built. Don't stay there too long, though, boys and girls, or you'll be wanting to get that taste of gun oil in your mouth, if you know what I mean.
I wonder how Kafka would feel about post modernism?
All you say is true; nevertheless, you will not ever cause people of means not to spend more money to try to give their own kids a perceived advantage. For some folks, $500.00 an hour won't even be missed.
We homeschooled, but starting in middle school we sent our son to a tutor, twice a week, for composition skills.
We knew he'd need to be proficient in that area in college (and since we were going to use dual credit, and he'd start Comp I at college in his 10th grade year) we figured it would be worth the investment.
Best money we ever spent. He whizzed through college compositions with no problem at all. I, personally, could not have done the job that needed to be done in teaching him composition skills.
I know. The rich can do it. I don't mind. However, the trouble is that this could spread to middle class, due to failed educational system.
For now, it is confined to urban area of both coast.
This is how people end up paying for failed government program.
Tutor can serve useful purpose. However, once tutor craze blooms in earnest, it could get ugly. NYC may be heading into that direction.
Your comment reminds me of some of the a-holes I knew in grad school. In my opinion, Kafka sucks and is not worth sacraficing a good tree to make the paper to print his trash on. One of my fellow grads students offered that the reason I didn't like Kafka was because I wasn't smart enough to understand and appreciate his work. I responded that I do understand and appreciate Kafka, which is why I know that his writings sucks. (BTW, Post No. 9 is right on target.)
Re your tagline, 'Why isn't there an "NRA" for the rest of my rights?' There are 'reasonable regulations' on all rights dispensed as privileges by the likes of the National Reasonable-regulation Ass. I'm sure that the ACLU thinks its actions reasonable and Sarah Brady's distemperate termagants too.
As to the thread's topic; there must be classroom failures just as there will always be economic failures, 'the poor.' As long as schools are self-esteem academies you can be proud to be poor and ignorant.
Sarah Brady damns the worst one percent of gun-shops, but there will always be a left-hand tail of any distribution, a worst one percent.
"The way to fix it is to strengthen curriculum and improve the teacher quality. To do that, you have to purge entrenched liberal loons in educational establishment."
I respectfully disagree. The best way to fix the government schools is to encourage parents to homeschool, with assistance from other homeschool families and/or tutors.
Government schools should be the educators of last resort, not the first.
Ping.
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