Class of One

I've been meaning to post for weeks now, but the confluence of launching Tutorpedia Southland (we now have tutors in Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Orange County) and getting the Tutorpedia Foundation off the ground has put my blogging on the back-burner. Through all of this travel and work, in countless meetings, lunches, and coffees, I have continued to laud what makes Tutorpedia different, how our programs can have a disruptive force on education: By giving students a "Class of 1."

How do kids learn with 30 students in a class? Or 20? Even the small classes that benefit most private schools rarely get below 15. So you have two dozen students (or twice that in public schools) in a room, all learning at different paces, all learning in different styles, all learning with different levels of awareness, ability, and aptitude. How is a teacher - even the most skilled, trained, and patient - to reach every child? There is just no way. And that's why we need a Class of 1: Personalized tutoring brings a Class of 1 to every student.

How is this scalable, you may wonder, with 6 million students in California alone? Well, first of all, not every student needs his or her tutoring subsidized (ie. many parents can, and do, pay top-dollar for 1-1 tutoring). So let's say that 50% of parents can afford the roughly $100/hour that most competitive tutoring companies or individuals charge. That leaves us with 3 million students who can't pay out-of-pocket. If we then focus on the lowest-performing 10% say, that's 300,000 students whose personalized education could and should be paid for by outside resources. In our calculations (at just under $30/hour, including program and administrative costs), we can provide 35 hours of 1-1 tutoring to an underserved student for $1000/year. To bring a Class of 1 to the most underserved students in the state, that would cost about $300 million. True, this a lot of money, but considering that Arne Duncan's Race To The Top fund provides more than $4 billion to innovate initiatives in education, that's a drop in the bucket (less than 8%), and California schools are a great place to start.

Let's use these same calculations with the San Francisco Bay Area, home to about 1 million K-12 students. If 50% can afford tutoring, that's 500,000 students who can't, so providing for the lowest-performing 10%, that's 50,000 students who would benefit most from 1-1 tutoring. At $1000 per student per year, that's investing $50 million in our future. The numbers are roughly the same for Los Angeles Unified School District.

What's the alternative? Increased Achievement Gap, more high school drop-outs, more students without a college degree. That's more undereducated students on the streets, and statistics show more youth in jail and prison. The cost of our prison industrial complex will soon exceed that of our education system. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, "by the 2012-2013 fiscal year, $15.4 billion will be spent on incarcerating Californians, as compared with $15.3 billion spent on educating them."

So why all these numbers and dollar amounts? Because the answer to fixing our broken education system is not that complicated after all. Yes we need better pay, better training, and better professional development for teachers. Yes we need more computers and adaptive technology for our students. But what we need most of all is more personal attention. We need to build trust, confidence, and relationships. Research shows that academic tutoring improves social interactions, classroom attention, and positive teacher attention. In order to close the Achievement Gap, graduate more students from high school, and prepare them for college, a more personalized model is needed. Another research article shows that students engaging in 1-1 tutoring show significant gains versus those engaged in conventional (30-1) teaching models. And this study shows the improvement of academic performance and attitudes of students receiving tutoring. There are countless other studies and research done on 1-1 tutoring, and it all points in the same direction: improved academic and social performance.

We all grew up with The 3 R's: Reading, 'Riting, and 'Rithmatic. Now we need to focus on the New 3 R's: We need to make education more Real, Relevant, and Rigorous. And all of these foci need to be built on personal Relationships. The best relationships are formed in a Class of 1.