Yesterday, my sister called to coordinate the time to meet up at a Chinese restaurant for Jonah's 12th birthday. (Happy Birthday, my sweet boy.) She asked if I read the New York Times article about the private school parents who spend $40,000 a year on tutors. I did. I said I wanted to move to Nebraska. She agreed. Then we exchanged stories about the crazy parents that we know. It's fun to hate on the crazy parents.
For more reaction to that article, check out Helaine Olen.
But I'm crazy in my own way. I'm slightly panicking, because the kids will be home in two hours (heat wave) and I have so much to pack in that time. I already did two miles at the gym, answered e-mail, and made the errand list for the day. I have a phone conference at 1:30, a therapist at 4, dinner, boy scouts at 7:30. With homework and laundry in there (not to mention my compulsive blog writing), things get cranked up to 11 pretty easily around here.
How do we get off the crazy train?
Apt. 11d 
Ehhh… Not to dismiss all points of Ms. Olen’s post, but I got into Cornell’s Arts and Sciences with some Bs on my public high school transcript, and I have to wonder if the grades might be curved, in which case if half the class is getting extra help, then the requirements for an A go up.
(Of course, it helps to not be from NYC area for NE schools, since geographic diversity is something admission officers are often told to promote. Course, we don’t really talk about that when fretting about college.)
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“Of course, it helps to not be from NYC area for NE schools”
Maybe it is worthwhile moving to Nebraska.
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The parent cited in the article spent $40,000 a year for tutors for one course. Math, science, language, English… My goodness. It all adds up.
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Our kids have been out of school for two weeks now. It feels like it’s been forever. Of course, they’ll be back in class around August 19.
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Alas, we are one of those parents, although the numbers are a little lower: ~$30K on our daughter’s tuition, ~$30K on tutors. But what is the alternative? She would have to switch schools otherwise.
I think the problem the NYC private schools have is that they take in students in kindergarten. By nature, then, they cannot be selective in the way Exeter and Andover are, yet they want to offer a similar curriculum.
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“Maybe it is worthwhile moving to Nebraska.”
I’d certainly pick Nebraska over NYC or NJ myself (particularly now that we have the internet). Fewer finance jobs for Mr. Steve out there, though.
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y81, what do you hope to gain out of all that money spent on private ed and tutors? Do you really think that without it, your daughter will be unsuccessful?
I moved out of NYC 6 days before my daughter was born. Best. Decision. Ever.
Is this all the equivalent to steroids in professional sports? Since Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds are taking steroids, everyone else has to?
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I’d like to move to Nebraska, not that the geographic diversity helped me apply to colleges more than not knowing anything about those colleges hurt me.
House prices are down a bit in Lincoln. I don’t know about Omaha. Things are a bit calmer, life-style wise. Or were.
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And, you can buy booze in the grocery stores. August and January/February are just horrible, weatherwise. The rest of the time it is mostly nice enough.
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“Alas, we are one of those parents, although the numbers are a little lower: ~$30K on our daughter’s tuition, ~$30K on tutors. But what is the alternative? She would have to switch schools otherwise.”
“y81, what do you hope to gain out of all that money spent on private ed and tutors? Do you really think that without it, your daughter will be unsuccessful?”
That or just miserable and feeling left behind academically (even though her natural level of performance would have her be an academic star just about anywhere else). Is that the right reading?
I think it’s a bit of a disservice to the country that our media is so NE-oriented. The NYC lifestyle is freakish, and yet the NYC/NE world drives the national media coverage of college entrance.
“I moved out of NYC 6 days before my daughter was born. Best. Decision. Ever.”
Living where we live (in a college town in Texas), I’m pretty sure that I could duplicate whatever y81 is doing with tutoring for 1/10 or 1/5 of the price. (Our private school costs 1/5 as much.) It seems like an awful gerbil wheel to spend your life on (make the big money, pay the big tuition, make the big money, pay the big tutoring, make the big money, etc.), unless you actually love every minute in the place.
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Well, y81, I’m glad to hear that someone in the story actually exists, ’cause I wouldn’t really have thought they did, before.
When we started in K, I asserted that I’d have my kids leave the school, if we had to resort to tutoring. She’s in 4th now, and it hasn’t been an issue. I think it won’t be, given her peers and her work (through 8th, at least).The article, too, says that the goal is not just to do well enough to stay, but to do well enough to be at the top of the heap in every class (ala Tiger Mom). Our school bends over backwards to try to make that it really difficult to know anything (and they can mostly get away with it since they’re not a high school).
But, as with all things kid-related, I think it’s dangerous to say never about anything at all. Also, it’s not possible to cherry pick one thing (NYC, private schools, fancy hotels). Once you make one choice, you end up being on a path that makes other choices very difficult to avoid.
(In our case, private school has meant a crazy demanding schedule with lots of activities all over town.)
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I am generally very happy with the Raggirls’ public school. If I have one complaint, it is that they assign too much homework. Every night, we sit them down, and tell them to do their homework. Usually, this happens and then we are done. Perhaps one night per week or two per Raggirl, there is an “issue” where they don’t understand something in the homework. Then, we explain/ re-teach what the point of the homework assignment is, make sure she understands where the apostrophe goes, or why 3/9 equals 1/3, and then life goes on.
I imagine, though, if we weren’t there giving that help, that the girls could end up falling behind. And then we’d hate our school district.
I think this goes back to the impact of social class versus teacher quality, and what we mean when we say that teachers have a “20% impact.” I have no doubt that our teachers have a 20% (or more) favorable impact on the Raggirls, because they teach in a way that is complementary to how we parent. If they taught so that they didn’t move on until every last kid understood, the Raggirls would get bored. If they taught how they do, and we weren’t there to fill in the gaps, the Raggirls would get lost. That doesn’t make the teacher “good” or “bad” — it just makes her part of the system that works for us.
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“But, as with all things kid-related, I think it’s dangerous to say never about anything at all.”
If it were just one or two subjects that required tutoring, it would make sense to stick with the school. If every single subject (including lunch) requires tutoring, your kid is at the wrong school.
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“I think it’s a bit of a disservice to the country that our media is so NE-oriented. The NYC lifestyle is freakish, and yet the NYC/NE world drives the national media coverage of college entrance.”
Speaking of, the LA lifestyle is also pretty damn freakish (in parts at least). I should see if there are some bizarre college-prep stories set in Brentwood or Bev. Hills for balance. Or maybe Silverlake/Los Feliz where the hipsters roam.
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It’s also a question of framing.
We pay for private piano lessons for the Raggirls because elementary school band is lame. And we pay for gymnastic classes because they love gymnastics and there’s not a lot of it in school gym. (We also pay in for softball for the same reason.) And we pay for Hebrew school twice a week because they go to public school, which practices separation of synagogue and state. And they are going to drama camp this summer because there’s not really a “school play” in our district until High School. And the art class. And we’re starting yoga on Saturday . . .
If you count all of that as “tutoring” to make up for shortfalls in the school district, we’re paying thousands of dollars in tutoring too. If you count that as “normal parenting,” then we’re not.
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To answer some of the questions above, what I hope from my daughter’s education is that she would acquire cultural literacy and end up leading the examined life.
We want to live in the New York City area because (i) we grew up here, and it’s home and (ii) we like living where the best of everything (books, clothes, baseball teams, churches, etc.) is always available. We have to live in the City, not the suburbs, because my wife would go crazy without a job and I can’t imagine running a suburban household with two parents commuting to demanding jobs in the City.
So our choices are limited. Could our daughter obtain the education we want in a public school in a wealthy bedroom suburb or a university town? No doubt, but that isn’t where we choose to live. What about in a standard-issue New York City public school? There I do have severe doubts.
So the life we live is the result of a series of conscious and deliberate choices.
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You can, if you want, have Hebrew School, art, and yoga in Nebraska. A quick googling suggests that in Lincoln your only option is a reform temple. Omaha has more variety.
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MH,
As a minimum, you need both the synagogue you go to, and then one spare that you would never willingly enter.
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Columbus, OH. It’s flat, fly-over country, but it’s big enough to have temples and hebrew school.
(The best of clothes and books are available everywhere, now, with online ordering. Of course, very few in Nebraska, or Columbus will know that you’re wearing the best clothing. But then, that’s true in the Pacific Northwest, too. )
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Not to mention there’s plenty of good Korean food and groceries in Nashville, so it’s not like you’re stuck with tuna casserole forever when you move to “flyover country.” (Don’t know about Nebraska.)
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The article actually makes the point of one/one tutoring for sailing being considered standard, so why not one/one tutoring for “The Renaissance World” or whatever the class was that everyone gets tutoring for?
I raise a few points in my mind. First, I have a concern about what tutoring really ends up offering, especially for parents whose goal might be an “A” in the class, and not “an examined life.” Sailing (or other sports) are judged quantitatively by arbitrary rules). They are games, and thus, it is appropriate to game them within the rules. Presumably the goal of sailing tutoring is to teach the skills required to win a sailing contest. But, if the goal of education is to learn to live an intellectual curious life (the words I like to use), tutoring to get an A, rather than educating, isn’t necessarily getting to the goal I desire (since getting an A can be gamed in a way that avoids the education I’m really aiming for). Now, I don’t think tutoring has to be that way, but I do think that many parents are paying for performance and not an experience. So, as a tutor your job isn’t to teach the children, but to teach them how to get A’s in the course, two goals that aren’t necessarily aligned.
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Of course, very few in Nebraska, or Columbus will know that you’re wearing the best clothing.
Columbus is nice. Wexner, the guy with half the stores in average mid-range mall, tried to bring in a very fancy store that I refuse to google the name of. It was like, “Columbus, New York, Paris” below the name. It lasted a while.
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What bj said.
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Columbus is fancier than either Cleveland or Pittsburgh. In those places, for a man, all you need to look dressed is a shirt that doesn’t have some team logo on it.
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Omaha is great. The rest of NE however…
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Lincoln is nice. Doesn’t have the restaurant diversity you can get in Omaha, but living is nice.
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I don’t understand how people can buy clothes on-line. I have to touch the fabric to know what I like. With respect to books, I was thinking of the library more than the bookstore.
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Let me tell you a trick, straight from a Nebraska émigré. You can buy clothes online without touching the fabric if you always wear the exact same thing. I’m replacing, not shopping. It’s pretty rare that a good store* will use a cheaper fabric without calling it something else so you know.
*I mostly buy Brooks Brothers, and because of the recession, Land’s End.
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Also, if you live in Hyde Park, have free Amazon prime, and stay up late drinking to procrastinate on work, you will buy lots of clothes online. Sometimes you will get lucky (see: pair of shoes purchased at 80% off at 3 am) and sometimes you will regret it (see: $10 BR blazer bought on ebay which was $10 too much). Sometimes you will also have to take trips into the city to return stuff to avoid $6 return fees, at which point you realize you should have just gone in to shop in the first place.
But on the article, I have a hard time getting too upset by parents who spend six figures on tutoring, since obviously that is a tiny slice of a tiny slice of Americans, kind of like celebrities who buy $5,000 dog shampoo. In fact, the realization that people will pay $300/hour for tutoring gives me hope that when I finish grad school and the only available academic positions will be adjuncting for $5/hour, I can tutor rich kids on the side. Also, outside of LA and NY, I’m not sure how much this sort of craziness happens. I went to a (the?) top public high school in Portland, and there were kids with tutors, but I imagine it was more like $20/hour, and the people I know who got tutored did it so they could get a B instead of a D in math class. I myself used to tutor my classmates in trig and physics. Sometimes their parents would pay me some money, and sometimes they (the student) would just take me out for a meal or something. I didn’t really like to accept remuneration since it was kind of weird to have your classmates’ parents hire you to tutor your classmate, it felt like being a combo of teacher and servant, which made for a weird dynamic (especially since I was poorer than most of my classmates and a top student, so it wasn’t a dynamic that needed to be magnified.)
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Yes, living in the NYC has its pros and cons. The pros have to be the great, affordable food, museums, art scene, and work opportunities. Honestly, if we didn’t procreate, we would still be there. But there are a high number of super intense people that you have to deal with.
re: tutoring. We have never hired a tutor, but I do a lot of unofficial tutoring depending on the year. Jonah had a crappy teacher in 3rd grade. I probably worked with him for 2 or 3 hours every night. His 4th grade teacher was great, so I didn’t have to do much. I’ve been helping Ian with his academic work for an hour every night. I probably should be doing more, but I’m getting burned out. If I charged the family for my services, it would add up.
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The $5,000 dog shampoo is totally worth it. Not just other dogs but humans will come up to sniff you dog’s butt.
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“I probably worked with him for 2 or 3 hours every night.”
And, I do think this is one of the differences. I think some of the paid tutoring is simply replacing parental tutoring. It isn’t that the parent couldn’t do it, but they don’t have time or the inclination to do so, and they are willing to pay someone else to do it. Working parents who are invested in their jobs often feel this way — why should I (bake, lead a GS troop, drive carpool, volunteer as a coach, volunteer at a tournament, . . . ). Why not pay someone to do it? Paid coaching now appears to be standard for our “elite” soccer teams. Another team mate suggested that we hire someone to be the “volunteer” at a tournament our team participated in. Does the person have to do the work better than you (i.e. your paying for teaching) in order to make it worthwhile to free up your time for money? A lot of parents decide not, that they just want to be able to spend their time doing something different.
Now, I do think some of the issue with the kind of tutoring described in the NY Times article is that it really does change the playing field. The example given is a tutor who has developed expertise in a specific class offered at a specific school. This expertise probably involves collections of past students’ work, tests, questions, the kinds of things that would be acquired informally among different students in the olden days. This paid provider then, offers special access to these materials for a fee.
SAT prep, and high-stakes testing preps in Asian countries involves this kind of tutoring. The only response that testers have come up with is to try to make the same kind of information more generally available (i.e. printing their own collections of test and solutions). That’s the SAT solution, and one being adopted by a number of the national test designers in places like India, too.
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If I were paying 60K or more to educate my child to increase her cultural literacy, I would yank her right out of school, period, and pay that salary to a full-time tutor (think Septimus Hodge, Thomasina’s tutor in Stoppard’s Arcadia).
When I worked in college admissions, we loved the home-schooled or unschooled kids, and they frequently received merit scholarships because they were among an elite motivated by intellectual curiosity and not by GPA or SAT perfection.
The parents interviewed in the NYT article seem hellbent on ensuring that their kids are “successful”, but don’t seem to invested in their moral or spiritual development. Are there tutors for that?
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…but don’t seem to invested in their moral or spiritual development. Are there tutors for that?
Do you see a business opportunity for a certified Nebraskan to offer that tutoring?
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Hey, I see that East beat Southwest. Now I can go mock my cousins.
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