We’ve all seen them: ads boasting student achievement, promoting private tutoring services. Within LM, tutors are far from rare. Ranging from humanities to STEM to the SAT, students make good use of private educational resources. Matching many of these resources, in-school opportunities for enrichment are offered in abundance. Enrichment for most common subject areas is provided on most days after school hours, but it is highly underutilized. What are the differences between these resources, and why do so many students flock to private tutoring when provided with what many deem as “equal” school-funded tutors?
Even in the absence of class rank, socially formed academic rankings are often prominent within LM culture. Students feel the heat of maintaining a high academic performance, regardless of externalized pressure from teachers or colleges. With burnout permeating much of the student body, many struggle to allocate additional time within their school day to attending supplementary Lunch & Learn sessions, or in-school tutoring. When asked about her biggest struggle with attending Lunch & Learn sessions, Priyal Chipa ’26 shared, “I honestly find the school day with sports and long hours of homework tacked on is super exhausting. By the time lunch rolls around, I honestly need the time to recoup before my afternoon classes, otherwise I feel so burnt out all day. I try to go to Learn, but it can feel overwhelming to only get a 25 minute lunch break within my day. For most classes, Learn tends to be packed with teachers struggling to address every student.” The mentality that attending Lunch & Learn significantly lengthens student days and deducts from focus in afternoon classes is common—with students agreeing that a break during the sixty-minute lunch period aids their performance later in the day. While a great resource, and one that LM is very fortunate to feature, some students feel that they get more out of extra help when consulting with outside of school resources: tutors.
Charging anywhere from twenty to hundreds of dollars an hour, tutors are not only in high demand, but abundant in supply. In LMSD’s 24.1 square miles, a simple Yelp search finds seven large private tutoring centers, not including freelance tutors, parents that help out in classes they excelled in, or online services designed specifically for high school students. While some view these resources as detrimental to student work ethic, research proves quite the opposite. In a 2022 publication, the Annenberg Institute at Brown University examined its benefits and drawbacks. The article outlined that a large portion of tutorings variable effects can be attributed to the kind of tutoring accessed by a student, with high-impact tutoring benefitting pupils the most. In a high-impact environment, instruction is given in small groups or one on one, and recurs two to three times a week in, at minimum, thirty minute intervals. Clearly requiring significant time and energy, high-impact tutoring historically increased attendance rates by as much as seven percent (IgniteReading), boosted confidence on subject matter, and decreased the need for intensive intervention. While not every setting yields these highly positive results, tutoring has a great potential to serve students, helping more than hurting.
Let our lens shift from the tutors to the tutored: students receiving tutoring make up roughly eleven percent of all public high school students (EducationWeek). While this sample suggests that tutoring is statistically uncommon, it is not unreasonable to estimate that the demographic of LM students receiving tutoring is significantly higher. Within local tutoring centers, educators can recall exact prompts, dates of upcoming exams, and school schedules with ease, attesting to the density of our district’s students attending their programs. When asked, Emma Barrabee ’25 explained, “In my math classes in high school, tutoring has been really helpful. My tutor would sit down with me and fully explain the problem, which really allowed me to understand the content. It definitely boosted my grade, but more than that I feel like it helped me build a foundation of things I understand to go from one math level to the next.” This appears to be a common theme, with pupils utilizing tutoring to not boost a grade, but to foster genuine understanding of topics. Brooke Jackett ’26 elaborates on this, adding, “I feel like especially doing a time consuming sport, being able to access a tutor outside of school is really beneficial for me. I especially find it helpful with studying, because I want more than to just pass one test. It’s important that I actually understand what I’m doing, so when finals roll around I have a solid cumulative knowledge of the class.” In a district with such a competitive academic culture, it’s no surprise that students make use of resources outside of school.
In spite of the observable benefits of tutoring, parents and teachers alike are concerned that tutoring culture has become far too normalized in LMSD. Afraid that students no longer put in the work, and instead resort to private resources to fabricate genuine effort, there is an increasing stigma around actually receiving help. While a completely valid concern, students seem to feel far differently. When prompted, people appear to feel that their tutors genuinely do help them learn about their classes, and require more effort than blindly stumbling through a course. Lola Widjaja ’26 says , “It definitely is more work for me to go to tutoring for my classes. I care about how I perform in school, so by putting in extra effort with a tutor I can guarantee those results.” This underscores the common theme that LM students are going the extra mile in an attempt to not only see results, but to learn. These benefits have created an avalanche of individuals feeling that they, too, should attend tutoring to improve. As we continue to challenge high schoolers with college level coursework, busy schedules, and challenging time constraints, tutoring, to many, is the final puzzle piece to a thorough understanding of schoolwork.
