If you’ve read the
screaming headlines lately such as “Duncan to Florida: Tutoring Doesn’t Work”
in Education Week, and similar articles in local papers across the
country, you might believe that the Secretary of Education thinks that tutoring
doesn’t work. I don’t think that’s true. Secretary Duncan is
actually questioning if tutoring done under the convoluted regulations of the Supplemental
Educational Services (SES) provisions of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is
working. And he’s absolutely right, it isn’t working.
I’m a fan of Arne
Duncan and this administration’s efforts to reform our education system. Programs
like Race to the Top are forcing everyone involved, including public schools,
teachers, charter school operators and ed tech innovators —to re-think how we should
work together to create the right solutions for achieving better results.
Students need us adults to figure out some tough issues right now, or we will
continue down our current path of unacceptable numbers of students who are
unprepared for college or careers in this economy.
Focused and
personalized attention from a thoughtful educator (a.k.a. Tutoring) is an
important part of those solutions. Giving students the opportunity to work one-to-one
with a high-quality tutor is one of the few strategies that a significant body
of research has proven that it works. Search for and read the
often-cited work by Benjamin Bloom in 1984 at University of Chicago and
Northwestern University. And read the
more recent work in 2011 by Harvard Professor and Economist Roland Fryer in the
Houston schools. The most thorough studies conclude that tutoring is highly
effective, when done right. (Happy to
email the full papers to you if you ask, gcigale@tutor.com).
More affluent parents
don’t need research studies to know that tutoring works. These families spend
an estimated $5 Billion annually on tutoring and test prep, often paying over
$100 per hour for the highest quality.
Unfortunately, that’s not the quality and results that less affluent
students are getting when they receive SES tutoring in local school districts,
even though the cost is very high.
Having students sit in
a school room for a group tutoring session doesn’t mean they are learning. There are many more ways to do tutoring
poorly than well, and SES created a structure and set of incentives for finding
lots of ways to do it poorly while allowing the companies (and some districts)
that provide it to reap financial rewards.
I can write at length about those details, but common sense says tutors
need to be able to focus on student needs; tutors need to have timely information
about student weaknesses; tutors need to be held accountable for student
improvement; students need to want to be there…
Duncan and his team have
seen enough and read enough evaluations of SES tutoring to conclude that there
are better ways to achieve results. The
headlines, and stories are wrong – we need to invest more in the types of
tutoring that do work, and Duncan’s team knows it. I’m trying not to be defensive or
self-serving, but having education publications screaming that “Tutoring Doesn’t
Work” is like writing “College Isn’t Worth It” when some higher ed models are
implemented poorly, or health magazines writing “Evil Vegetables?” when over-use
of pesticides is causing health problems.
Such headlines and stories are intellectually lazy and do a great deal
of harm, especially when they are reprinted and quoted widely in local papers.
I founded a 24/7 online
tutoring service over a decade ago. I know from firsthand experience that
providing students with access to one-to-one help from experienced, expert
tutors does indeed work.
While I write this,
several thousand students from across the country are working with a Tutor.com
tutor, in real-time in our online classroom. I can see in the queue of
requests from students that there’s algebra (lots of them), chemistry, physics,
calculus and writing questions directly tied to the work students are doing in
school. A key part of our formula for great tutoring is that no
reservations or appointments are ever needed – students get help the minute
they need it, just as they are experiencing a need and are motivated to
overcome the challenge.
On average, our students
spend about 20-30 minutes with the tutor, getting the tutor’s complete
undivided attention. At the end students complete an evaluation of their
experience. We record and save every session, and the content is compiled
into in-depth reports for the schools and other institutions that pay for the
tutoring. Complete transparency and accountability.
We know, after completing more than 8 million one-to-one on-demand sessions, that more than 90% of the students report they are more confident in school, completing more assignments and improving their grades. In 2009 we asked more than 1,000 students their attitudes toward tutoring and achievement. Here’s what they said:
Ø 86% of student respondents say they would be more likely to take an AP Course if they knew that an expert subject tutor was available to help them online, 24/7, one-to-one, and on-demand, any time they get stuck.
Ø 96% of student respondents say they believe that having an online tutor available whenever they need help would result in them being more ready for college.
But don’t just trust our statistics – read Bloom’s and Fryer’s
thoughtful studies about tutoring. Any
self-respecting educator and researcher knows that tutoring works well when it’s
done right. Interestingly, both Bloom
and Fryer (almost 30 years apart in their research), conclude that we need to
find more cost-effective ways to deliver tutoring. Well, at Tutor.com, we think we’ve done that
by using technology in a smart way, and I’m sure we are not alone.
U.S. students need more access to high quality tutoring, not less, and
we need to learn from recent innovations and replicate these success models.
Maybe not as simple and easy to write, but I’ll be working towards that
headline. George Cigale
gcigale@tutor.com
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