More families are seeking one-on-one help for their kids. What does that tell us about 21st-century education?
Emily, a lawyer from Texas, can’t remember exactly where she first heard about Mathnasium, a math-focused tutoring center located near her home in the suburbs of Austin—probably through volunteering at school or at a backyard party in her close-knit neighborhood. But parents in her friend group lauded its benefits often when talking, sometimes under their breath, about their kids’ math troubles. These accolades prompted Emily to view her own son Lyle’s math struggles a little differently. (Emily asked that we use first names only, for the sake of privacy.)
Emily noticed at the end of 1st grade that Lyle hadn’t learned simple math facts such as 2 + 3 = 5, and he frequently got confused on addition and subtraction operations. Math homework, which she often helped with in the evenings, caused him stress, and by the end of 2nd grade this past spring, Lyle was already worrying about how hard multiplication would be in 3rd grade.
“I get the sense they’re not pushing memorization” of math facts at his local public school, Emily said. Yet parents she spoke with who sent kids to Mathnasium two or three times a week were seeing big improvements in their students’ benchmarks and state test performance—some had improved so much they were being invited into the honors math class.
“If I feel like my efforts at self-tutoring at home aren’t getting him where he needs to be, I’d consider using Mathnasium as a support, so it could match where he is on reading and everything else,” she said. “There’s only so much that I know. Why not leave it to the experts?”
