In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C H A P T E R F O U R “Parents Spend Half a Million on Tutoring” Standardized Tests and Tutoring Gaps So wealthy family, you produce smarter kids, and low-income families produce what? Average students because their lack of resources. That’s terrible. I think that’s terrible. —Mei Chee, parent Taiwanese immigrant Mei Chee is angered by what she observes as the reproduction of inequality within education. The inequalities detailed in the previous chapters are aggravated by the rapid growth of a tutoring industry that reverberates throughout families and schools. Globally, tutoring is a multibillion-dollar enterprise, and tutoring franchises are increasingly popular for investors to open and to trade publically (King 2011). For example, with its 26,000 centers around the world, the fifty-year-old Japanese company Kumon reported over $800 million in annual sales in 2008 (Davidson 2008). In 2009, the Kaplan Review, one of the largest test preparation companies, earned over $190 million in revenue (Butler 2010). Within the United States, the intensification of standardized tests and businesses that seize on the fears of families and students determined to gain admittance into desired colleges and universities have made tutoring a lucrative industry. In fact, as the role of SAT scores have increased in college admittance, so too have private SAT prep courses (Buchmann, Condron, and Roscigno 2010; Byun and Park 2012). Likewise, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has also been a boon to the tutoring industry. Under NCLB, Title 1 schools that for three consecutive years do not make what is referred to as adequate yearly progress on tests must provide free supplemental tutoring through private organizations to lowincome students.1 With federal money from public schools reallocated to 134 “ PA R EN TS S PEN D H A L F A M I L L I O N O N T U TO R I N G” fund private tutoring, leading companies have experienced skyrocketing enrollments and revenues, in some cases quadrupling in students after the implementation of NCLB (Karla 2004, 2; Wood 2004). There was nearly a 50 percent increase in federal funds allocated to such supplemental educational services, from $1.75 billion in 2001 to $2.55 billion in 2005 (Koyama 2010, 60). At SCHS, some students and parents also feel compelled to subsidize public school education by paying private entities and individuals to boost test scores and increase college options. However, as parent Mei Chee critiques, tutoring fosters greater inequalities and allows larger questions to go unexamined, such as what is being taught in schools and what is expected of today’s youth: Most parents send their children to take SAT tutoring. It costs $1,000! I feel so sad for low-income families because obviously the tests you are giving to students are too hard. Why are so many students complaining math is so hard? Why are students complaining science is so hard? And we have to send our students to tutoring that costs a lot of money? What about the low-income families? Mei Chee is saddened by such a system where schools are basically ignoring the needs of students and limiting their life chances. Echoing Mei Chee’s concerns, Ah Kum Chan, a parent and a member of the staffulty, tabulates the prohibitive costs of tutoring: My husband says SCHS parents spend half a million on tutoring classes . . . Just high school: The chemistry tutor, $250. Then $85 per week for the SAT prep. That’s just considering SAT I. SAT II is more. The math tutor, at least $30 to $40 an hour. Then how about the English tutors? How much money? A lot of students have three to four tutors. The amount of money that some parents are able to spend is astronomical . Thus at SCHS, where tutoring feels expected, students left without this resource are at a severe disadvantage. As detailed in this chapter, while the price of tutoring is high, the costs of unequal access are more than monetary. Compared to their schoolmates, middle-class and upper-middle-class Asian Americans enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program (IB) and advanced placement (AP) courses are more likely to have concurrent and accelerated tutoring.2 In contrast, few Latinas/os describe participating in private tutoring. Unless they are enrolled in the school’s AVID (Advancement via Individual Determination) program, which provides peer tutorials, when Latinas/os need academic assistance, many ask friends, go to the school’s peer-tutoring program, or...

Share