There are many different reasons for using a tutoring service for your child. The top three that we encounter are; 1) my child is falling behind and I want to assure success, 2) although my child is doing okay, the work seems too difficult and demanding and I want to lighten the burden and 3) my child is competing for the top grades and/or is about to take standardized tests it is important that this continue.

There is at least one other and quite different reason for sending a child to a tutor. Some parents send their children to a tutor as a punishment for doing poorly in school. They hope that the tutor will provide attention but be so unpleasant that the child will work hard to avoid the tutoring experience. This might be called the scared straight motivation for tutoring.

These different interests lead to a number of different tutoring paths. There are services that primarily help children who are struggling or significantly behind in school. Some services primarily serve children who are preparing for tests. There are services that aim to lighten the load, often by helping the child to get their homework done and serving as an extension of the school. Lastly there are centers that provide a broad spectrum of services to address any or all of these various issues.

There are roughly three groups of providers for tutoring. One is national chains, such as Lindamood-Bell, Huntington Learning, SCORE or Stanley Kaplan. The second group is smaller, locally owned businesses, such as The Fluency Factory, and the last and largest group is individual tutors either traveling to the home of the student or delivering services from their homes. Frequently the home-based tutor is a local teacher, or a retired teacher who wants to continue to teach.

Just as there are specialty areas for various tutoring services, there are also strengths and weaknesses to each approach. The various specialties are quite different in price, duration, and effectiveness. Tutoring prices reflect the local economy and cannot be relied upon as an assurance of quality.

Each approach has its own abilities to provide the following benefits.

• Tutoring can provide personal attention and highly individualized instruction and feedback. Sometimes a child feels lost in a room of 25 or 30 kids, or the teacher is simply unable to provide assistance to the quiet learner who does not rock the boat. These overlooked children often do extremely well when they are given increased feedback and attention to their learning.

• Sometimes a child is gifted but it is not really appropriate to advance the child to the next grade. Tutoring can offer fresh and individualized challenges to keep the child excited about learning.—while continuing the important peer relationships and age groupings that the child already enjoys.

• A tutor is not a parent! Despite having wonderful relationships with their children parents frequently find that they have difficulty helping their children with learning. Children are often more willing to open their minds in one-on-one academic settings when parent-child dynamics aren't involved.

• Having a tutor makes many children feel special. Tutoring can provide individualized coaching in the same way that gifted athletes are often privately trained. The result is often increased confidence and willingness to take on more difficult challenges.

• The current teaching methodologies in most of the South Shore school systems are not based upon the most recent research in reading. Tutors can provide the phonics, phonemic awareness and other fluency components that are not yet fully implemented in public schools. This can mean a dramatic difference in reading skills for the child.