Tutoring on the dark side...

Push for A’s at Private Schools Is Keeping Costly Tutors Busy

"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." (Anderson, Jenny. June 7, 2011.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/08/education/08tutors.html?src=me&ref=general (accessed June 8, 2011).

I can barely keep my head on.  

Unable to write coherent sentence.

Just read the article.  There are tutors in NYC charging $195-$795 per hour...nay...per 50 minutes. 

One the one hand, we get a sense of sweet freedom...a beckoning, a reminder of a distant bright possible future....of buying a gorgeous condo from the tutoring fees for one class alone....

On the other hand, it feels skeevy and wrong.

But to be fair, these companies also provide pro bono services, so the rich offset tutoring for poor kids.

There is so much to discuss here.  Why does Riverside high school discourage tutoring--that alone is enough for a Phd thesis.  Why is there a need to evaluate kids based only on the information disseminated to them whilst in your presence?  If we want to test or grade them only on what they could have possibly learned in your classroom, then forbid them from reading the newspaper, from trolling the internet, from visiting the library.


Why is a mother paying SIX FIGURES to tutor her child through high school?  What high school is that hard?  For six figures, those tutors had better be cloning themselves, getting face transplants to look like the student, and taking the tests themselves.


Also...does it make you as a student feel dumb when it takes $100,000 for you to get "A's"?


One sentence pops out at me:


"Michael Michelson, director of academic studies at Riverdale, said the school’s policy was to discourage tutors, and to make teachers accessible for extra help."


Um...at first this seems innocuous...but the word "make" clangs in my brain.  I'm sure they do "make"--as in "force"--the teachers to be available for extra help.  


I sincerely hope these teachers leave work promptly at 3 pm or whenever their work day officially ends...and make their way speedily to a tutoring center not terribly close to their own primary place of employment...and charges 500 bucks an hour for their services (oh, had I read the entire article FIRST..I would have seen that they are doing this!  SCORE!  NYC private school teachers... you make me proud...)


One almost feels tempted to barter a solution.  All the parents band together and pay the teacher(s) to make the class(es) less difficult.  If you were going to spend $10,000 on tutoring for ONE CLASS...wow...that teacher could stand to make millions!  I feel a dystopian novella coming on...


But to me, the saddest part of the story is how people feel unable to exercise their free speech rights: more than one parent in the story seems to feel squeamish about speaking to the press because the schools which their children attend discourage open communication.






(Thanks to L for this head-up.)  

Selling Lesson Plans (hiatus over)

Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions


To me this is entirely non-controversial.

Do you sell cookies you have made at home (occasionally)
Do you sell private music lessons?
Do you sell your expertise on your off-hours in such endeavors as plumbing, yardwork, painting houses, how to do algebra, et cetera, times a million?

Then why in a million universes would you not be allowed to sell lesson plans?* 

I commented:

"I'll tell you who doesn't own my intellectual proerty--the school system. And as soon as schools begin laying claim to this intellectual property, teachers need to demand 1) higher salaries, 2)profit sharing in the materials developed...or they need to WALK. Teachers need to think seriously about the implications of this--what if you write a book about your classroom experiences--something unobjectionable, uplifting, non-defamatory. Perhaps that book might even land you on Oprah--you could become rich. Does the school system own the copyright?

All of this needs to be spelled out to teachers BEFORE they sign their yearly contracts. College professors know precisely what their intellectual property rights are and avail themselves of multiple opportunities to profit off of their expertise, on the lecture circuit and through publishing."

Dear Readers: forgive my typos--I was in an apoplectic fit!

***
So, finally, after weeks if not months of promising, I will begin to compile where and how you can increase your hourly wage.  Thanks to the NY Times, I have found these two websites:

weareteachers.com
teacherspayteachers.com

Soon I will be posting how to earn money delivering instruction online; however, I personally have found this terrifically difficult to break into.

Most radical--starting one's own private school, charter school, home school, tutoring company-whatever you want to call it. 

"Unschooling-inspired commune slash ashram."

More to come.


***

*Obvious reasons why (not):

• you did not write the lesson plans--this is called plagiarism--DOI!!
• you co-wrote them with other colleagues--hey--split the profit!  Get their permission first!
• the school system paid you to write them - still unclear--a newspaper may pay you to write an article, yet you STILL OWN THE COPYRIGHT!!!!  It's called an anthology--I writemusic criticism, and do plan one day tocollect these and other writing togather for publication.  I'd like the newspapers to try to stop me.

125K

This is not meant to depress you. It is food for thought:

Well-Paid Teachers? I’m on Board by Christine Graslow explores
The Equity Project Charter School (TEP) which will open this September.


Moral of the story? Teachers should be paid for their real hours, not their fabled hours. And, it's possible. I would love to see this school's budget, simply to find out if these types of salaries are sustainable.

I'm concerned for colleagues who will become addicted to this level of pay and then find the school shuttering after a few years. Call it the wrought-iron handcuffs.*

Also, the cost of living in NYC is extremely high, the hours demanded are "greater," the length of the school year is longer, and teachers perform administrative functions (which we do anyway). When Dan is not too lazy, he will figure out the level of pay in terms of cost of living.

However, bear in mind: more hours = rather than sitting in your classroom grading papers until 5 pm, you are required to be there and are compensated for that. The days are long, but so are lawyers' days....doctor's days....see where we're headed? So, in order to make a professional wage, we may need to be willing to trade off the perceived flexibility of the teaching day (which is bogus and will be explored later), or at least the ability to occasionally get out of work to meet one's own children after school, run errands, hit the bank before it closes.

In essence, we may need to stop conceiving of teaching as The Mommy Job.

Or, we may need to demand more flexibility. That is in the next post.

***

A new paradigm has been born. I hope this school is an astonishing success. It needs to be in order for us to have a model of much higher teacher pay resulting in benefits to students.

So, it's not all bad news!!


* Couldn't think of an alternative to the "golden handcuffs" syndrome super rich lawyers complain about, which entails becoming so used to the money that it seems impossible to leave the job, no matter how odious, time-consuming or soul-draining. On 125 K a year in New York, the handcuffs wouldn't be golden, but...something not quite that good.

"Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?"

"Do Teachers Need Education Degrees?":

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/education-degrees-and-teachers-pay/?em

Maybe, maybe not. But I know one thing we do need....

MORE MONEY.

There are 368 comments as of 8:30 am...comments are not closed. What makes us so happy is that the commentators took the opportunity to re-frame the argument towards what teachers need and care about.

Out of all the "experts" given pride of place in the debate, only one is a current/practicing teacher. One out of nine. I'm sure the other people have wonderful things to say...I'd like to further examine how many years they have spent in a classroom. It speaks well of us as profession that 300+ teachers added their voice to the discussion in the comments section.

Notable:

One commentator reported that her husband, who has a Master of Fine Arts--an M.F.A. [he is presumably an art teacher] is not considered highly qualified because he doesn't have a Masters...an M.A. He has an M.F.A.

Because God forbid we should highly skilled artists teaching our children art.