Congress is in the midst of revamping NCLB, but progress has been slow despite universal agreement that it should be updated. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced in September 2011 that states could apply for waivers on third-party tutoring, provided they agree to various reforms advocated by the Obama administration.

Already thirty-seven states plus the District of Columbia have said that they intend to apply for a waiver between now and mid-February 2012. If granted, the waivers would free districts in these states from setting aside hundreds of millions of dollars each year for after-school tutoring targeting the lowest-performing students. This sweeping change would effectively end SES, which has already been eliminated from the Senate’s version of the updated NCLB legislation.

With a waiver, schools could funds previously earmarked for SES to support other programs designed to increase academic achievement among low-income children. This could free up more funding for other kinds of afterschool programs besides tutoring, and create new opportunities within the private education sector.

The nonprofit Afterschool Alliance is one source of guidance on how districts can effectively redistribute SES funding. Other industry associations, such as the Education Industry Association (the trade organization for private tutoring companies) and Tutor Our Children, continue to lobby to preserve SES.

What do its detractors say is wrong with SES? According to recent analysis by CBS News,  many point to low participation rates. Financially strapped districts may set aside 20% or more of their federal education money, which then goes unspent if few students sign up for tutoring – even as other budget items are slashed and teachers laid off. In districts where participation is high, there’s often not enough SES money to provide sufficient tutoring, limiting its effectiveness.

Another major issue is that there seems to be no clear, measurable indication of effectiveness commensurate with the money spent. At the same time, there is little linkage between provider effectiveness and payment because no federal money is available to monitor the tutoring companies.

Meanwhile, those defending the program assert that it gives underprivileged children access to vital educational resources that “level the playing field” with wealthier students. Many also feel that giving parents the ability to choose a tutor provides an important option for supporting their child’s education.

States that applied for waivers by the first-round deadline of November 14, 2011 could halt their participation in the SES program beginning with the 2012-2013 school year. What might these districts use their federal funds for besides after-school tutoring? In-school tutoring and summer school programs are often cited as alternatives that could be in better alignment with districts’ curriculum.

What might these potential changes to SES mean for the tutoring industry? SES providers are likely to be negatively impacted. However, overall demand for tutoring should remain very strong in line with competitive college admissions and other factors.

Does your tutoring company have a stake in the changing SES landscape? Please comment on how you feel SES waivers might impact the quality of education for low-income students.

Featured image courtesy of the US Department of Education.

Today iPhones and iPads are ushering in dynamic, collaborative educational techniques, and even replacing books and saving money in classrooms. Indeed, the iPad may be Jobs’ biggest legacy of all. In the third quarter of 2011, educational sales of iPads were greater than all of Apple’s educational Mac desktop and laptop sales combined. Teachers and tutors love its portability and long battery life. And it’s intuitively easy for even young children and kids with learning disabilities to use.

Apple also offers iTunes U, an innovative, iPhone accessible distribution channel for educational content “from lectures to language lessons, films to labs, audiobooks to tours…” More than 800 universities – as well as institutions like the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and numerous PBS stations — have active ITunes U sites, and many organizations distribute their content publically on the iTunes store. Besides offering countless podcasts, iTunes U supports both the PDF and ePub file formats. The latter can be read on iPads, iPhones and the iPod Touch, as well as any compatible e-reader.

According to an interview with Daniel Morrow, executive director of the ComputerWorld Smithsonian Awards Program, Jobs pointed out that teachers and tutors are key to fueling curiosity and make learning possible. Jobs said, “You need a person. Especially with computers the way they are now. Computers are very reactive but they’re not proactive; they are not agents, if you will. They are very reactive. What children need is something more proactive. They need a guide. They don’t need an assistant.”

Undoubtedly Jobs was an inspiration to countless students from grade school through grad school. He was also an ardent supporter of the innovative use of technology in schools. I resonated with the observations of the StateImpact Florida blog, which pointed out that “the corporate cultural differences between computing giants Microsoft and Apple have also served as a proxy in the debate about changing the US higher education system.”

The blog astutely points out that Microsoft founder and massive education donor Bill Gates wants US higher education institutions to focus more on subjects that correlate directly to jobs. Whereas Steve Jobs said at the unveiling of the iPad 2 in March, “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.”

I also greatly appreciated the frank insights offered in the Edudemic blog on how Jobs “legacy of fearlessness and innovation” can serve as guidance for educational reform. Among many good points made in this blog post, the author (recent college grad Jesse L) reminds us that NeXT Computer, while a financial dud, was the inspiration for the first web server and laid the foundation for the web browser. The writer’s point is that we often focus too hard on outcomes, and thus miss the bigger picture that frames innovation.

Long live the educational legacy of Steve Jobs.

SAT vs ACT: Choosing the Right Test [NEW EBOOK]

More than 35,000 conversations have been archived so far, many in the context of various “initiatives.” For example, StoryCorps is recording one story for every life lost on September 11, 2001, to “honor the lost voices of 9/11.”

On September 19, StoryCorps launched its National Teachers Initiative at the White House. The Initiative celebrates the contributions of America’s public school teachers. “By recording, sharing, and preserving their stories, we hope to  call public attention to the invaluable contributions teachers have made to this nation, honor those who have embraced the profession as their calling, encourage teaching as a career choice, and unify the country behind its teachers – helping us all recognize that there is no more important or noble work than that of educating our nation’s children,” the StoryCorps website explains.

The Initiative will place special emphasis on the work of teachers striving to increase the number of students who graduate prepared for college and careers. With major funding provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the effort is part of American Graduate, a public media initiative supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to help local communities across America address the dropout crisis.

Both my parents were public school teachers, and my sister was a substitute teacher for many years. I can appreciate that teaching is emotionally, intellectually and physically demanding – even more so now than when my parents were working. There’s scant pay or prestige in the profession these days, and the rewards are often intangible.

Renee Thorton, a teacher in New York, NY put it this way: “Even though you plant a seed and you don’t see it flourish or bloom, it’s there, and it grows.”

That’s why it’s great to hear StoryCorps founder Dave Isay say, “I think there is no higher calling than being a public school teacher in this country. Teachers are feeling under attack and underappreciated. We want to do our part over the next year to turn that around.”

StoryCorps itself also has an educational component. For a start, teachers and tutors have used StoryCorps stories and interview methods in their classrooms since the project’s inception in 2003. These powerful stories can be used to teach history, while the interview methods teach the value of simply listening. A school in Illinois has likewise adopted the StoryCorps model, complete with musical backgrounds, as a way to teach English.

There’s also StoryCorpsU, an interactive, standards-based college readiness program that teaches students the power of their voice and enforces the message that every voice counts and every story matters equally. The program uses StoryCorps content and interviewing techniques to enhance students’ skills around speaking, listening, writing and critical thinking – while also supporting greater self-awareness and social awareness.

During the 2011-2012 school year, StoryCorpsU is being implemented in twenty classrooms through partnerships in New York City, St. Louis and Washington, DC. The plan is to expand the reach of the program to more schools across the country over time.

One of the teachers who spoke at the White House at the initiative’s launch last week said he’d quit studying medicine to become a teacher when he realized that was his calling. “Whatever job they’re going to have in their future lives – they couldn’t have it without me,” he said.

That’s the value of teaching and tutoring.

Please comment and share your thoughts.

Featured image courtesy of StoryCorps.

Though shorter school weeks have been implemented from time to time in the US since the 1930s, and briefly became widespread during the “energy crisis” of the 1970s, definitive studies and reports on the impact of the shortened school week are few. This research brief is one of many that indicate that the change can often improve attendance and morale for both students and teachers.

Some proponents even tout improved academic performance; especially where cost savings might forestall teacher layoffs or larger class sizes. (Most evaluations indicate that there is no net effect on achievement, though some reports have shown reduced test scores.) Opponents raise concerns about how long, tiring days in the classroom will affect young children, and point to the burdens placed on working parents to find costly daycare.

What is the impact of the four-day week on tutors and tutoring? There may be some downsides the overall effect is likely to be positive.

Most encouraging is the fact that some districts instituting a four-day week are explicitly inviting students who need extra help to come to school on their “off day” for tutoring sessions. In some cases, schools are reinvesting the money they’re saving to create tutoring opportunities, such as hiring one-on-one tutors for academic underachievers.

Similarly, when the school system in Georgia’s Peach County moved to a four-day week, several community organizations (including Boys and Girls clubs and a church) began offering affordable tutoring on Mondays (their “off day”) for only $10 to $15.

Will students have less time and energy after school for tutoring on the days when they attend classes? Some tutors may need to shift their schedules to connect with learners on their off day or on weekends – possibly making for some intensely busy days for tutors. But most schools are pushing dismissal ahead by no more than an hour, while reducing lunch and recess times. So after-school tutoring opportunities might not be adversely impacted.

Tutors who connect with students online or “on demand” might benefit from an increase in business as learners move to fit tutoring into their new school-day schedules. For example, tutors who can support “digital learners” who want to learn anytime, anyplace, at their own pace, may take yet more business from traditional tutoring services due to the shorter school week.

The “bottom line” for tutors is that shortening the school week can potentially create new opportunities: first by opening up a “tutoring day” on Monday or Friday, and second through increased demand for services in areas where schools are hiring tutors. As always, those who can adapt their offerings to the changing needs of students and their families will be positioned to make the most of the situation.

Featured photo courtesy of Jean Valley.

SAT vs ACT: Choosing the Right Test [NEW EBOOK]

Download this free 20-Page Ebook for Tutors Now!

Our free 20-page ebook is a step-by-step guide on how to select the right test for your student. Learn everything you need to know about using the PLAN and PSAT to improve student scores, how to leverage learning analytics to select one test over the other, and other tips on how to take the guesswork out of selecting the ACT vs the SAT.

Siddhartha School educates over 300 students in grades nursery through 10. Most of the kids are from poor Buddhist families. They live in a region dominated politically by Muslims within a Hindu country. They speak Ladakhi, a dialect of Tibetan. Surely they are among the most geographically and politically remote kids in India.

I could blog for a year about my experiences in India. But one impression stands out in my mind: those disenfranchised kids buzzing happily around a dusty building with no heat and virtually no electricity were, at least in language, math and science fundamentals, better educated than their American counterparts.

I recall walking into a Grade 10 math class and looking at the blackboard in astonishment. The kids were studying pre-calculus, which I struggled with in an “advanced” 11^th grade class. When I conversed and later began corresponding with some older children, I found they spoke and wrote English – their third language – almost as well as their American age-mates.

Jobs are hard to come by in Ladakh. From Grade 10, a child’s economic future depends on whether he or she can pass the J&K state academic proficiency exams, which are similar in format to the Indian School Certificate Examinations (ICSE) Standard X exams.

Despite numerous cultural and other challenges I’m proud that almost 100% of Siddhartha School’s 10^th graders have passed those exams and gone on to “intermediate college” (11^th grade) and even college. One girl in our first graduating class had the highest aggregate scores in all Leh-Ladakh! Now she’s studying in Delhi and will return to Ladakh as an optometrist.

Tutoring plays a huge role in the success of these students. During the school year and over the long winters, when school is not in session, members of the community help tutor the children for the exams. For some students, preparation begins several years out. Their powerful motivation and strong “work ethic” make all the difference.

I’m not the only one who feels, based on direct observation, that kids in India could outperform American kids in core subjects. If you’d like to sample India’s national proficiency exams, check out The Third World Challenge. Robert Compton, creator of the challenge and also the related documentary Two Million Minutes, shares more of his views and experiences in The Voice.

If you’re curious about how the US ranks against other countries, check out the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This internationally standardized assessment, administered to 15-year-olds, seeks to assess how well students have acquired skills “essential for full participation in society.” Sixty-five countries participated in PISA in 2009, and you can compare their results online using interactive profiles.

India’s educational standards and performance are gradually rising, while US performance has fallen to “average” relative to the PISA assessment. India will likely participate in the next round of PISA assessments, scheduled for 2012.

Featured image by Lisa V. Blake.

The arrival of social media, smart phones and growing connectivity to the internet changed all the rules for many marketers who were used to traditional methods of attracting business. Suddenly you didn’t need a huge marketing budget to make an impact and connect with prospective customers; you could make a pretty solid niche impact with patience and a grassroots, organic way of thinking.

It’s simply not enough to advertise to your prospective customers, many block those messages out and instead search through online recommendations and use Google searches to find what they’re looking for. For this reason, we created the Socrato blog. Though the core of our business is to help tutors prepare their students for standardized tests through our custom learning analytics, we also want to provide value to tutors beyond our products.

This blog has been our sounding board to discuss not only our special point of view of what is happening in the tutoring industry, but also a place where we could share our marketing expertise with the tutoring population and help them grow their business online. So far we’ve amassed quite a bit of content on this blog around the subject and I thought it would be helpful to put it all in one place as the ultimate marketing guide for tutors.

Enjoy!

Facebook Marketing for Tutors

5 Common Mistakes Tutors Make on Facebook and How to Fix Them

How to Add Color to Your Tutoring Brand Using Facebook [3 Examples]

3 Reasons Tutors Need a Facebook Page Today

FourSquare Marketing for Tutors

How Tutoring Companies Can Use FourSquare Specials to Attract Students

How to Build Your Local Tutoring Presence Using FourSquare

SEO and Local Marketing

5 Free Local Tools to Kick Start Your Tutoring Presence Online

4 Offsite Marketing Opportunities Every Tutor Should Embrace

How Tutors Can Use Long Tail Keywords to Get Found by Local Searchers

Marketing Strategy

Is Digital Darwinism Making Your Tutoring Business Obsolete?

Why Tutors Should Heed Google Experts Social Media Advice

How Tutors Can Build a Likeable Online Reputation

Blogging for Tutors

Transform Your Tutoring Blog from a Wall Flower into a Socialite

How to Build a Blog Your Tutoring Audience Loves

5 Simple WordPress Blog Tools Every Tutor Should Add Today

How Tutors Can Get More Leads from Existing Blog Content

Video Marketing for Tutors

Why Every Tutor is Ready to Start Publishing Video Tonight

6 Things Tutors Can Learn from Merriam-Webster’s Online Video Campaign

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SAT vs ACT: Choosing the Right Test [NEW EBOOK]

Download this free 20-Page Ebook for Tutors Now!

Our free 20-page ebook is a step-by-step guide on how to select the right test for your student. Learn everything you need to know about using the PLAN and PSAT to improve student scores, how to leverage learning analytics to select one test over the other, and other tips on how to take the guesswork out of selecting the ACT vs the SAT.

Fortunately you don’t need to learn how to do Facebook right all alone. There are many businesses who have paved the way before you to creating engaging and creative Facebook business pages, should you take some time to look for them. Using these pages it’s easy to glean some proactive moves you can make to help build a Facebook business page that attracts your prospects, engages them and keeps them interested in the months to come.

To help teach you these tips, I point you to a few successful Facebook pages which articulate the value of getting creative and colorful on your Facebook page. Enjoy!

Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online

We’ve already talked about some of the fantastic video content that Merriam-Webster has been putting together, but how they’re using it on Facebook is even better. They’re actually embedding the videos straight into Facebook for their fans to enjoy without leaving the Facebook platform!

If you’ve yet to create a piece of video content and share it on your Facebook wall with your followers you’re missing out on a fantastic opportunity to stimulate their minds and foster some engagement. Don’t worry if people don’t react right away to your change of place, keep the video content interesting and post it during times when your prospects might be at leisure to watch a piece of video content.

Tutor.com Online Tutoring for Military Families

If you’re only posting text updates to try to engage your tutoring prospects on Facebook, try to stimulate them with photos instead as Tutor.com Online Tutoring for Military Families has done. Photos are a great way to break up the monotony of your Facebook page and draw attention to your brand in the prospect’s feed. In the past year, Facebook has put even more emphasis on highlighting photos on Facebook, so if you haven’t experimented with creating visual content, now is a great time to start. If you’d like a comment about the photos to appear, I recommend adding a brief summary of the photos in your photo album (this will appear in the feed). If you upload a single photo at a time, then be sure to make create a description of that photo as well so the context of your photo appears in the feed, too.

Vocab Videos

One way to create content for your Facebook page and involve your fans is to feature a contest or showcase of talent from your fans. One educational business on Facebook that does this well is Vocab Videos, a SAT prep service that creates humorous vocabulary videos to help students learn difficult SAT words easily. They often feature student created contests on their various social accounts which lead to a lot of repeat engagement from Facebook fans while getting word out about the contest through showcasing each individual submission.

featured photo by Capture Queen

SAT vs ACT: Choosing the Right Test [NEW EBOOK]

Download this free 20-Page Ebook for Tutors Now!

Our free 20-page ebook is a step-by-step guide on how to select the right test for your student. Learn everything you need to know about using the PLAN and PSAT to improve student scores, how to leverage learning analytics to select one test over the other, and other tips on how to take the guesswork out of selecting the ACT vs the SAT.

Putting Ideals into Action

However, in practice it’s harder to put these ideals into action when you have a parent who “has paid good money” to see results for their child, or has unreasonable expectations. These pressures can be especially tough on tutors who, according to some horror stories I’ve heard, often been expected to package the child like a product to pitch to the parent’s alma.

Though most parents might not be the horrible monsters that these stories make them out to be, these tales do have the same effect as an Aesop’s fable. They inspire us to think on our moral rights and responsibilities professionally. Even if a parent never asks you as a tutor outright to write an essay or get their student into a highly competitive school that the student simply doesn’t have the capacity for, you may at some point have to decide if your job is to serve the parent or the student. However, to run an ethical and helpful tutoring business, you really have no other choice but to represent the needs of the student to the parent fairly and perform the actions that best meet the student’s needs rather than the parent’s desires.

How Tutors Can Better Manage Parents

There are a few ways that tutors can manage the relationship with parents while serving the student. For one, if you’re a tutor who offers SAT and ACT prep services to students, you could  use testing data to establish a firm baseline for the student and communicate what can be done for the student in a realistic way. In this way, tutors could take a tip from marketers and underpromise and over-deliver on results. Avoid telling the parent what they want to hear, instead tell them what they need to hear.

You should also be sure to use learning analytics (such as the learning analytical software by us at Socrato) to firmly ground the parent into the reality of how the student is currently performing.  Parents too often see their children as they want them to be, not as they actually are — though this is often the sign of a loving, parental mind, it can often lead to a lot of pressure on the student to reach goals that are often loftier than they can obtain.

Another way to better meet the needs of your student while managing the parental relationship is to offer the parent a way to easily track their child’s progress. You should also keep the parent informed of what they can do to help strengthen their student’s performance.

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featured photo by ragardner4

SAT vs ACT: Choosing the Right Test [NEW EBOOK]

Download this free 20-Page Ebook for Tutors Now!

Our free 20-page ebook is a step-by-step guide on how to select the right test for your student. Learn everything you need to know about using the PLAN and PSAT to improve student scores, how to leverage learning analytics to select one test over the other, and other tips on how to take the guesswork out of selecting the ACT vs the SAT.

As a tutor who is dealing with a generation of students who grew up around computers, it’s your responsibility to break through the technological clutter of their daily lives and help them focus on the task in front of them. However, it sounds simpler than it actually is in practice, more often than not you may have to use the tools that are familiar to the student to help them connect with the study material. Instead of forbidding technology that distracts students, bring that technology in as a teaching tool.

There are a lot of teaching tools out there you could use during your tutoring sessions, but none is as portable, as powerful and useful as the iPad. Here are a few must-download iPad apps for tutors that you can use to make your tutoring sessions more stimulating for your student without losing site of the traditionalist inside you.

Graphing Calculator HD

With nearly all the functionality of a TI-82 (and 99% off the TI-82’s $80 sticker price) this little app is a great tool for students in algebra, calculus, trigonometry or other advanced mathematics.

Math Formulas

When your student is stumped on which mathematical formula to use this helpful app is a great studying tool to help get them back on the right track.

Flash-Me

Now you can use Cramberry (a stand-up online flashcard maker) on your iPad! With Flash-Me, you can create, edit and study your flash cards on your iPhone. You can also share these flashcards as studying tools with your student.

DropBox

Are you going a little crazy trying to keep track of all of your important tutoring tools, documents and important papers? Then you need DropBox. With DropBox you won’t waste precious time searching for a video or piece of content you need for your student, instead you can use DropBox to store all of your documents in one place, sync all of your computers and devices, and create public folders that you can share with your students to access.

Algebra Touch

If your student needs help visualizing Alegbra problems, this little tool could come in handy. The student can tap to simplify the equation, rearrange it, and draw lines to eliminate identical terms.

iAnnotate PDF

If you’re working on the SAT Essay portion of your tutoring sessions or doing a little comprehensive ACT prep, this tool could be helpful to you. Using this App your students can turn a PDF into a document that they can highlight, annotate, and scribble all over.

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featured photo by jossfassbind.com

SAT vs ACT: Choosing the Right Test [NEW EBOOK]

Download this free 20-Page Ebook for Tutors Now!

Our free 20-page ebook is a step-by-step guide on how to select the right test for your student. Learn everything you need to know about using the PLAN and PSAT to improve student scores, how to leverage learning analytics to select one test over the other, and other tips on how to take the guesswork out of selecting the ACT vs the SAT.

Online video is a great way for tutors to connect and engage with students online and get their name out about their brand. Now that high quality video cameras are easily available to the public and online video software comes loaded onto our computers, creating video isn’t as difficult as it used to be. That means that a lot more teachers, tutors and students are creating helpful SAT preparation videos which millions of users can access 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

After spending a couple of hours on YouTube combing through some very bad and boring SAT preparation videos, I’ve unearthed 5 clever videos that really have the ability to engage and connect with students. You can use these videos to engage with your student, start a conversation about a new tutoring topic, or help your student relax before the big SAT test comes up.

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1.    SAT Words in Real Life

by Knewton

Knewton SAT has a clever way to bring the SAT words which plague millions of high school students to life. Through these short less-than one minute clips students can learn how to apply the words they’re reading on flash cards to real life scenarios. It also teaches the student how to associate a story with a word as a memory device.

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2.     SAT Reading Prep: Long Passages

by Prep Interactive

You’ll find a lot of SAT tips and trick videos online but I thought this one was particularly good at summarizing a strategy for reading long passages on the SAT. I also thought the age and look of the speaker was appropriate for high school students who may connect more with the video if they feel that the speaker is young, hip and attractive. The speaker almost looks like he stepped of the set of an MTV show or the set of Twilight. On top of that, the videos are controlled, easy to digest and thanks to the trust-worthy quality of the source, your pupils will be easily engaged with the whole series by Prep Interactive.

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3.     Real SAT Stories: Living Up to Your Potential

by erpepper

If your student is having difficulty with staying relaxed and envisioning their potential, Karl Schellscheidt, CEO of ePrep, has a message for your student: stick it out.

Though Karl Schellscheidt admits that not every one is capable of getting a perfect test score, he does have a positive message for students who aren’t happy with the test scores they received after working so hard for them. It’s a positive message and an engaging store well worth sharing with your students.

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4.    SAT Rap: “Relax” by Charter Squad

by Elka131

The week leading up the SAT can be a whirlwind mind suck for your pupil. When you spend so much time working with the student and trying to prepare them for test day it’s easy to forget to remind them to laugh, smile and do their best.

This awesome rap by the teachers at Believe High Schools gently reminds students of important SAT preparation tips and reminds them to get ready, but also to relax, too. This would be a great video to show your students as a “last tip” before test day.

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5.   Guessing on the SAT is Wrong

by MysteryTutorVideos

The Mystery Tutor is just the sort of distracting and useful education that students crave. This mysterious tutor donning Groucho Marx glasses and a full on ninja bunny suit has a lot of fantastic tips for students on his YouTube channel.

Students will enjoy the initial weird of the video, but with less emphasis on the looks of the instructor, it places much more emphasis on the quality SAT prep content.

featured photo by Cordey

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SAT vs ACT: Choosing the Right Test [NEW EBOOK]

Download this free 20-Page Ebook for Tutors Now!

Our free 20-page ebook is a step-by-step guide on how to select the right test for your student. Learn everything you need to know about using the PLAN and PSAT to improve student scores, how to leverage learning analytics to select one test over the other, and other tips on how to take the guesswork out of selecting the ACT vs the SAT.