Say "No" to Tutoring?

Say "NO" to tutoring?

Why you’re broke and your kid’s not getting any smarter

So you’ve hired a tutor for your 12-year-old son. Is it working? Probably not. And the reason has nothing to do with the tutor … or your son. It’s the approach.

The problem with the majority of tutoring programs is that they focus on the same content the student would receive in school; the theory being that the teacher wasn’t presenting the information properly, or the student must not have heard the teacher the first time. The truth is, more than 80 percent of learning problems are due to weak cognitive skills, not poor teaching, poor eyesight or disinterest in the material. On the contrary, many kids are disinterested in material because they don’t have the learning skills to understand, process and remember the information.

"Tutoring does have its place – such as when a child falls behind in a particular subject due to an extended absence," explains Tanya Mitchell, Vice President of Research and Development for LearningRx. "If there’s a family move or the child misses course material due to a lengthy illness, for example, then tutoring can help catch up on course material. But for most children who struggle in school, the issue isn’t about ‘catching up’ on course material. It’s about weak learning skills, like attention, visual and auditory processing, memory, logic and reasoning, and processing speeds. These are the fundamental tools that help us focus, think, prioritize, plan, understand, visualize, remember and create useful associations, and solve problems. Stronger cognitive skills mean stronger learners."

The results are in

In a recent study of SES Tutoring Programs in several Chicago public schools, 61,466 students were enrolled in tutoring provided by a wide variety of for-profit and not-for-profit groups. Most students received between 40 and 80 hours of tutoring. Gain scores were calculated by taking the difference in scores on the standardized test (ITBS) in 2004 and 2005 and dividing it by the expected gain. A gain of 1.0 equaled one year’s growth in achievement. If a student gain was more than 1.0, the student learned more than the average student; and likewise, if the student gain was less than 1.0, the student gain was less than the average student.

The results were incredibly disappointing: In reading, students with tutoring had an average gain of 1.09 compared to a gain of 1.03 for students who were eligible for tutoring but did not enroll and 1.06 average gain for all students citywide. In math, the gain for all groups was even lower than in reading. (The math gain for all tutored students was .94 compared to an average gain of .92 for non-tutored students and a citywide gain of 1.01.) Overall, with 40 to 80 hours of tutoring, the tutored students earned an average of less than 10 days of improvement compared to students who did not participate.

Why tutoring doesn’t work

Take a subject like third-grade English. Students who aren’t strong readers may be just as smart as their peers. "The problem isn’t intelligence, it’s weak cognitive skills," says Dr. Ken Gibson, author of "Unlock the Einstein Inside: Applying New Brain Science to Wake Up the Smart in Your Child" "In the case of reading, the weakest cognitive skill will almost always be auditory processing."

According to Dr. G. Reid Lyon, Former Chief of National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Child Development and Behavior Branch, NICHD-funded research has shown that to improve reading skills, ‘brain training’ should have a firm foundation in phonological awareness. Before most poor readers can learn to read successfully they need to learn that spoken words can be broken apart into smaller segments called phonemes. Next, they usually require training in phonics -"mapping" phonemes to the printed words on a page. Once children have mastered these steps, they can then receive training to help them read fluently, and to comprehend what they read.

For example, if a problem reader first goes through specialized cognitive training for auditory processing, more specifically phonemic awareness, and then a good "sound-to-code" reading program, there can be dramatic success.

Where to start

If you’re considering tutoring, first ask yourself if your child simply needs to get "caught up" on a particular subject (such as History), or if there may be an underlying learning struggle. One way to find out for sure is to have their cognitive skills tested by a professional.

"If a deficiency is found, it’s vital that the underlying skill sets are improved before the child is placed in a reading tutoring program," says Mitchell. "Otherwise, you’re just throwing your money away on tutoring."