Ambitious parents are paying for human and digital tutoring, reports Holly Korbey on Education Next. "Between 1997 and 2022, the number of in-person, private tutoring centers across the United States more than tripled," mostly in affluent areas.
In addition, personalized digital tutoring is booming. Companies such as WyzAnt and Outschool say "they’ve enrolled millions of students for millions of hours in private, video-based learning sessions that students access conveniently from home."
Often tutoring is filling "holes in students' foundational skills . . . that schools are somehow overlooking," she writes.
Tutoring centers are mushrooming in areas with well-financed, well-reputed public schools, Korbey writes. Parents, who tend to start worrying early about their children's college prospects, can afford the $75-an-hour cost.
Where I live in Silicon Valley, there's a tutoring center in every shopping center, always with Mandarin writing in the window.
Online tutoring is a lot cheaper. Outschool, Wyzant, Anchorbridge and others can "often find someone who can cater to their specific skills and needs — someone who can offer help in French to a student with ADHD, for example," Korbey writes.
Even cheaper is Khan Academy’s Khanmigo chatbot, which costs $4 a month, she writes. Nonprofits like Learn to Be provide virtual reading and math tutoring free to students from very needy families.
Many school districts used pandemic funds to offer tutoring -- usually during the school day -- to students who fell behind. "High-dose" tutoring -- one-on-one or in very small groups that meet three or more times a week -- has been shown to raise achievement.
But scaling up tutoring and keeping quality high is a challenge, writes Sarah Schwartz in Education Week. It's hard to find tutors, time and money.
Nashville's tutoring program produced "small to medium effects in reading and no effects in math, according to a new study.
From what I've seen as a math teacher, far too many tutors are just expensive homework helpers that do little to help students actually learn the material.