http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/education/08tutors.htmlPush for A�s at Private Schools Is Keeping Costly Tutors Busy
By JENNY ANDERSON
June 7, 2011
New York Times
...
Private SAT tutors have been de rigueur at elite New York private schools for a generation, but the proliferation of subject-matter tutors for students angling for A�s is a newer phenomenon that is beginning to incite a backlash. Interviews with parents, students, teachers, administrators, tutors and consultants suggest that more than half of the students at the city�s top-tier schools hire tutors, an open secret that the schools seem unable to stop.
�There�s no family that gets through private school without an SAT tutor,� said Sandy Bass, the mother of two former Riverdale students and the founder of the newsletter Private School Insider. �Increasingly, it�s impossible to get through private school without at least one subject tutor.�
A decade ago, Advantage Testing, perhaps the city�s premier tutoring company, was essentially an SAT-prep factory; in the years since, said its founder, Arun Alagappan, academic tutoring has grown by 200 percent.
�More and more you have ambitious and intellectually curious students signing up for difficult classes,� said Mr. Alagappan, whose 200 tutors bill $195 to $795 for 50 minutes (though he said pro bono tutoring accounted for 26 percent of the work). �It�s no longer O.K. to have one-on-one coaching for sailing but not academics.�
What is most troubling to those trying to curtail academic tutoring is that instead of remedial help for struggling students, more and more of it seems to be for those trying to get ahead in the intensely competitive college-application race. Gone are the days of a student who was excellent at math and science just getting by in English and history; now, everyone is expected to be strong in everything (including fencing, chess, woodworking and violin).
As more solid or even stellar students hire expensive tutors, the achievement bar rises, and getting ahead quickly becomes keeping up.
�B used to mean good,� said Victoria Goldman, author of �The Manhattan Family Guide to Private Schools and Selective Public Schools� and a Riverdale board member until 2007. �Everyone�s forgotten that.�
<rest at link>
I find it amusing to observe the college admissions arms race in NYC, perhaps because my children are still young and I don't live there.
The ideal of equal opportunity will never be achieved in a free society where parents are able to purchase extras for their children, whether its private schools, tutors, or (at the cost of one salary) a SAHM (or part-time-employed mom) who homeschools or tutors her children. It is the role of government to provide a basic level of educational opportunity for everyone, not to equalize things.
