I think of the difference between our culture's view of athletic ability vs. intellectual ability often. It is frustrating but I don't foresee it changing.
We have always seen remarkable differentiation (to the point of customization) every time DS has worked with tutors or mentors for academic subjects as well. But, the experience in his brick and mortar school is a different story altogether. My belief is that if you hire a tutor or a coach, they have deep specialization and knowledge in their domain and also love to teach and work with kids. The same can't be said of the elementary school teachers we have encountered for the past 3 years - some have lacked subject knowledge, some have lacked enthusiasm and some have lacked the interest in meeting the learning needs of the children in their classroom. But, most of them seemed to follow a "lesson plan" that is pre-made and comes in one-size-fits all.
My DS learns more in his once a week afterschool math tutoring in 1 month than he does in a whole year of school (where they tend to stretch out arithmetic and measurements for a few years) even though he is in a small group. The tutor spends maybe 10 mins with him and leaves him to work on his own and he still makes great strides in each class. In my opinion, all that it takes are - a deep knowledge of a subject, 10 mins per week of 1-on-1 instruction and followup work (correcting test papers or answering questions) to accelerate a child at his own pace. For most schools, that is so hard to do
