Effective one-on-one tutoring requires more than a mastery of the subject matter.  A good tutor needs to have a full grasp of the underlying issues which all play a significant role in determining how much the student will actually learn.

Broadly speaking, the tutor needs to understand where the student is coming from, and ask themselves questions like:

• how much of the learning material does the student already understand?
• what is the student’s learning style – how should I approach them in order to “get through”?
• if the student is confused, what is at the root of the confusion?
• how is the student doing in class at school? what is the curriculum?
• what is the student’s teacher’s teaching style? how will the teacher grade the homework or the exam?
• are the parents involved? what does the parent (who is often the one paying for the tutor) expect out of the session?
• is the student an “A student”, struggling to get a perfect score on the exam, or are they a “D student” just hoping to pass the class?

The answers to these, and many other questions will be different for each student.

I also think that understanding how be to an effective tutor will be helpful to parents when they sit down with your son or daughter to help with their homework, and to anyone else who finds themselves helping someone else learn new material.

Please feel free to offer your suggestions and comments as we explore these topics.

In celebration of all things Denver, No Excuses Tutoring would like to offer a promotional rate of $52.80/hour for all new students who will start tutoring lessons within the next month (01/12/10 – 02/12/10). The rate will then remain at $52.80 through the end of June 2010.

For those of you who are uninitiated, 5280 is a reference to Denver’s elevation of 5,280 feet (1,609 m  or 1 mile) above sea level. You may have seen the magazine by the same name, and the number is also significant during the Denver Restaurant Week (when a meal for two at participating restaurants costs $52.80).

I am offering this promotion is to encourage students to find a tutor early on in the semester. When it comes to improving grades and increasing subject matter retention, a steady and consistent learning plan is much more effective than the inevitable “emergency tutoring” that some students ask for right before the final exam.

As they say, the Tortoise Beats the Hare.

Typically, when you call or email No Excuses Tutoring, we’re ready with a qualified tutor whom we’ve worked with in the past, or at the very least already interviewed and vetted. And I thought I knew a few great Chemistry tutors as well.

But it turned out that none of the my Chemistry tutors were available. In cases like this, when I don’t already have a tutor to recommend, I like to promise that I’ll find you one, as soon as I can – which in this case had to be in about 48 hours due to an upcoming chemistry exam.

As you can imagine, I immediately deployed a craigslist ad, and started searching through my resume files. When at the end of the day, I still wasn’t satisfied with the quality of candidates, I decided to get more aggressive. I found a list of graduate students (and their email addresses) at CU-Denver’s Chemistry Department, and emailed ALL of them directly (about 20 emails), asking if they’d be interested in a tutoring gig. It worked. The best resumes I received and the person who eventually got the job all came from the more direct approach.

The next day, I interviewed a couple of candidates in person, and sent the best resume to the parent – who after the first tutoring session was thrilled that we were able to find such a high caliber tutor in such a short amount of time.

The graph shows that spending per pupil has lagged in Colorado behind the National Average, even after the passage of Amendment 23.

But isn’t that precisely the reason why we should consider revisiting Amendment 23? Hasn’t it been a complete failure in terms of it’s original intent?

And further more, there is something almost disturbing about the focusing exclusive on spending per pupil without making any connections between the money being spent the quality of education received.

I know, I know, it’s an old debate. But just as when talking about costs in education, it’s important to also talk about quality and effectiveness – it’s just as important to look consider making changes to Amendment 23, if we are considering changes to TABOR.

Our core business of one-on-one tutoring will remain at $60/hour, but you now have the flexibility of dramatically decreasing the cost of hiring our tutors by studying as a group, up with friends or family. For example, if you need help doing your homework, you now have the choice of forming a study-group with 2 of your friends, and getting our tutor to help all 3 of your at once. Now your rate is HALF of what it would have been, had you gotten a tutor individually.

So here is our new rate structure:

Rates:

• 1-on-1 tutoring, $50/hour

Group Rates:

• 2 students, $40/hour/student
• 3 students, $35/hour/student
• 4 or more students, $30/hour/student

What do you think? Good idea? Useful?

More than half of all Denver Public Schools graduates who enroll in a state college or university must take at least one remedial course … 

… and in most cases, that class is math.

We’ve been hearing a lot about this issue recently. Just a week ago the Denver Post published almost an identical story, and last month RMN itself did a story on it.

Here are some of the interesting quotes from today’s article:

 Ten of the 70 school districts have remediation rates of 50 percent or above. That includes DPS, Sheridan and Commerce City in the metro area.

 Seven school districts have remediation rates of 20 percent or less. Boulder Valley is the only metro area district in that group.

 School remediation rates ranged from a low of 4.8 percent for D’Evelyn Junior/Senior High School in Jefferson County to a high of 71.7 percent for Denver’s West High School.

 Three metro-area school districts have seen double-digit increases in their remediation rates over the past three years – DPS, Sheridan and Commerce City. DPS’ rate was 46.4 percent in 2006 and 56.3 percent in 2008.

At Abraham Lincoln High School, the number of graduates attending a Colorado college or university over three years has nearly doubled – along with the school’s remediation rate.