Manhattan Teen Accessories: Designer Jeans, $500-an-Hour Tutor

Manhattan Teen Accessories: Designer Jeans, $500-an-Hour Tutor
By Lisa Kassenaar
Bloomberg, 2006-08-29

When Casey Ravitz graduated in June from Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, she'd spent 14 years in three different private schools in New York City. For eight of those years, she'd kept weekly appointments with a $100- an-hour Manhattan tutor.

``I had a lot of friends who were being tutored, too,'' says Ravitz, 18, an investment banker's daughter who moved to Chicago in August to attend DePaul University. ``My last tutor wouldn't let me get away with anything. She was the most helpful person I've ever met.''

In New York, where tuition at some private schools will top $30,000 this fall, parents are spending thousands of dollars more on one-on-one instruction. Some teens need extra coaching -- which can cost more than $500 an hour -- to get through chemistry or Kafka. Others seek help to nab the A's required for a seat at Harvard or Princeton universities, says Lisa Jacobson, 47, who started Manhattan-based Inspirica Ltd. in 1983 and now employs more than 100 tutors.

About 75 percent of private high school graduates in New York have had some tutoring, says Sandy Bass, editor of Private School Insider, a New York-based newsletter published five times a year. Rising demand for so-called homework help, which is distinct from prepping for the SAT college entrance exam, has led the city's tutoring companies to add teachers and services.

Some are also jacking up prices. On Manhattan's Upper West Side, Allison Baer, 32, who has a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University, charges $225 an hour for helping clients as young as 12 with writing skills. Baer had more business in this year's first half than in all of 2005, she says, and will raise her fee by 20 percent in October.

`Madness'

Many parents feel pushed into hiring tutors to offer their kids the same advantages as peers, says Boston-based child psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, whose books include CrazyBusy (Ballantine Books, 256 pages, $24.95) and The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness (Ballantine Books, 256 pages, $13.95). Pressuring children to perform can quash their long-term interest in learning, he says.

``It's madness,'' Hallowell says. ``We are living in an age of incredible anxiety about children maintaining the lifestyle that their parents have achieved.''

Bass says the boom in tutoring is powered in part by Wall Street bonuses, which have been at record levels in the past three years. Bankers at securities firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. cashed a record $21.5 billion in bonus checks last year, according to the New York state comptroller's office.

Manhattan Teen Accessories: Designer Jeans, $500-an-Hour Tutor
Bass also credits fierce competition for spots in elite high schools and colleges as the baby boom generation's teenagers create their own demographic bulge. From 2000 to '04, the number of children aged 10-19 in Manhattan jumped 18.7 percent to 128,817, according to U.S. Census data.

The city's 87 independent schools, meanwhile, had 42,320 students in 2005, 11 percent more than in 2000, the New York State Association of Independent Schools says. ``Kids are taking harder courses and filling their schedules with things that help them stand out,'' Bass says. ``The tutor comes in to help them.''

When it comes to pressuring kids to achieve in school, New York is the epicenter, says Lloyd Thacker, a former admissions officer at the University of Southern California and founder of the Education Conservancy, an advocacy group based in Portland, Oregon.

``Tutoring is the symptom, and the fact there is so much of it says there is a sickness,'' he says. ``If past trends hold up, it's likely to spread.''

Buckling Down

Ravitz, an only child who grew up on the Upper East Side, was first tutored as a 7-year-old at Trevor Day School on West 88th Street. By the time she graduated from Poly Prep, she'd had three more tutors. One helped with essay writing; another, called in when Ravitz was struggling in 10th-grade French, steered her to B+'s in the class, she says.

``The tutors were able to help her to buckle down,'' Ravitz's mother, Debbie Dunn, 52, says. Her daughter's final Poly Prep report card, with two A-'s and one B-, hung on Dunn's refrigerator as she helped her pack for college.

Many private schools have loaded their curricula with university-level courses that demand hours of homework from students every night.

At Horace Mann School in the Bronx, for example, an honors physics class that covers mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism focuses on teaching students how to prepare scientific papers. At Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, one 12th- grade English class studies novels by Honore de Balzac, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Henry Fielding, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon and Virginia Woolf.

Real Pressure

``The pressure is real,'' says Edith Spiegel, whose daughter, now 20, was tutored while attending the Dalton School on the Upper East Side. Spiegel, 58, who taught in New York's public school system for 29 years, says the stigma attached to tutoring when she was a child has faded.

``When my friends got tutored, we thought of them as stupid,'' she says. ``Now, we need our kids to be as smart as they can be.''

Ivy League Tutors Inc., with offices on Manhattan's Madison Avenue, has instructors trained specifically to help students at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx complete a single 11th-grade course, Constructing America.

The class combines advanced placement material in both history and English, says Ryan Chang, 26, who founded the company three years ago and holds a bachelor's degree from Columbia University in economics and creative writing.

July Bookings

At least 25 kids used the service to get through Constructing America in the spring term, he says. Fall-semester students started booking in July.

Chang, whose instructors charge $125-$250 an hour, says competition is driving growth for his business, which now has about 100 clients and 20 tutors.

``Parents are worried that if they aren't doing it, it's a disadvantage to their student,'' he says. Lately, he's been turning away those who want to start their seventh- and eighth- graders on SAT preparation. The test is given in the 11th grade.

Individual instruction has ramped up all over the U.S. in the past five years, especially in California, Illinois and Texas, says Sandi Ayaz, executive director of the Lakeland, Florida-based National Tutoring Association.

Her organization is based in a state where home-schooled students are spurring demand for tutors. NTA membership, which includes private tutors, companies and others involved in administering educational services, jumped 62 percent to 4,900 this year and has risen almost sixfold since 2001, Ayaz says.

`Steroids'

In New York, the price and quantity of tutoring surpasses other regions of the country, she says. ``New York is on steroids, as usual,'' she says. Elsewhere, homework help goes for about $15 an hour from a college student and $25 from a graduate student.

Disparity in the quantity and quality of tutoring across the U.S. is deepening a divide between how wealthy and poorer kids are educated, according to Arthur Levine, who left the presidency of Columbia's Teachers College in July to head the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey.

``We live in two different cultures in America,'' he says. ``The result is that we have two educational systems that are separate but not equal.''

Wealthy parents are increasingly seeking help for their children's course work and test preparation, and for selecting a prestigious preschool, filling out private school applications and narrowing a roster of potential colleges, Levine says.

Extra Services

``Everything is on the table,'' he says. ``The vast expansion in tutoring -- sometimes at an enormously high price -- is part of that phenomenon.''

Manhattan tutoring companies ratchet up their prices by offering extra services. Inspirica, which bills $225-$525 an hour, offers seminars on school admissions and has three full-time employees just to deal with parents' questions, Jacobson says.

Instructors are hired for their teaching ability, and trained how to behave professionally when they give lessons, whether in a client's Manhattan apartment, on a yacht or in a vacation home in the Hamptons or in Europe, she says.

Brig Boonswang, 34, a former investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Inc., offers teens the use of a 42-inch (1.1- meter) flat-screen TV, one of Microsoft Corp.'s XBox 360 video game consoles and a fridge stocked with Red Bull energy drinks at his tutoring shop on East 95th Street.

Career Move

Some teens drop by four times a week and may stay hours beyond their one-hour, $250 session, he says.

Boonswang, who has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Columbia, began tutoring as a career in 2001 after talking to Stephen Spahn, chancellor of the Dwight School on the Upper West Side, at a cocktail party. Boonswang says he was unemployed after a Brazilian Internet company for which he'd helped raise $2 million went bust.

In April 2005, he was joined at Boonswang Group by Rachel Magid, 28, a 2004 graduate of Harvard Business School who previously worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. The partners now employ 10 part-time tutors and aim to have the same number working full time and revenue of $3.5 million in five years.

Boonswang says his job is much more rewarding than banking ever was. Buoyant kids text-message him after receiving good grades and sometimes seek his support as late as 2 a.m., he says.

Hiring a tutor lets parents maintain a smooth relationship with their teens, says Magid ``The parents would rather us deal with the kids and the homework,'' she says. ``It cuts out an ongoing struggle between them.''

Precious Hours

Highly compensated Wall Street professionals often have little free time for their families and don't want those precious hours to be muddied with homework stress, says Kathryn Smerling, an Upper East Side-based family therapist who has a doctorate in early childhood education.

They're also competitive, driven people who see their children's success as their own, she says. ``Having your kid perform is an important aspect for many people who live in New York,'' she says. ``And there is more competition now for your kid to be a superkid.''

The surge of teenagers also means it's harder to land a place in a top high school, and students who don't manage to get good grades are more likely to be ``counseled out,'' or nudged by school guidance counselors toward less-rigorous programs, according to Bass.

Recognizing how tough their classes can be, many private schools employ learning specialists, hold study sessions and ensure teachers are available for extra help.

Horace Mann

``The school discourages extra tutoring when it's not necessary,'' says Bernice Hauser, Horace Mann's director of intercampus activities. ``We can't stop parents from seeking it.''

Julia Calabrese, 18, graduated from the Spence School on the Upper East Side in June and entered Barnard College, a women's college affiliated with Columbia, across town in August. Her math grades shot up after a tutor taught her to draw a chart of how the sine and cosine relate to the tangent in trigonometry, she says.

``I was having trouble grasping this, and the entire last term of 10th grade was trig,'' says Calabrese, who was also tutored in French.

Anxiety about college is helping fuel business at Advantage Testing Inc. on East 86th Street. Arun Alagappan, 46, president of the 20-year-old firm, is probably the city's most expensive tutor. Alagappan charges $685 for a 50-minute session -- if you can get one. The waiting list for his time sometimes stretches to two years, Advantage spokesman Charles Loxton says.

Gunning for Grades

Alagappan, who answered questions for this story via e-mail, says about half of his clients are strong students who want to get higher grades or delve deeper into material that intrigues them.

``Students are more ambitious and competitive today than they were 20 years ago, and many are now applying to colleges with truly outstanding qualifications,'' he says. Alagappan is a Harvard Law School graduate who once worked at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, last year's top law firm for mergers and acquisitions.

A wall of academic honors isn't necessary for a good tutor, says Steven Pines, executive director of the Rockville, Maryland- based Education Industry Association. A college degree, a state teaching certificate and classroom experience can be much more relevant credentials, he says.

``You can be a great mathematician but not able to teach math,'' says Pines, who worked for 10 years at what is now called Educate Inc., the Baltimore-based owner of Sylvan Learning Centers, which has 1,200 offices around the country, including nine in New York. ``You need to be able to convey it in a way that's meaningful.''

Sacrificing Childhood

Hallowell founded a medical center in 1996 that offers treatment for attention deficit disorder, anxiety and stress. The psychiatrist encourages tutoring for children with learning problems. For other students, he says, parents may be better off banking the money and giving it to their children when they grow up and start a business.

``It's not worth it to sacrifice childhood to go to the Ivy League,'' he says.

The college admissions frenzy is at its worst in the New York metropolitan area because so many families are looking for spots in the same schools, Jacobson says. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut teens face longer odds of getting into the 25 most- selective U.S. colleges because of limits on how many are accepted from each region of the country.

Seeking Status

Princeton, which was named the top U.S. undergraduate institution this month in U.S. News & World Report's 2007 ranking of the best colleges, reported a record 17,563 applicants last year. The school accepted 10.2 percent for the class of 2010, down from 11 percent for the class of 2009, spokeswoman Cass Cliatt says. More than 7,000 of the school's applicants had high school averages of A- or better, and 95 percent of those accepted ranked in the top 10 percent of their class.

While doing better in school is the No. 1 reason people hire tutors, status can be a close second. Daniel Levine, who began tutoring in 1995 while he was playing the role of Marius in the Broadway musical Les Miserables, says parents passed his name around and bragged of their connection to a leading man. Levine, who has a bachelor's degree from Brandeis University and once planned to be a dentist, has performed as a singer, dancer and actor in seven Broadway shows.

His companies, Big Apple Tutoring and Exclusive Education, have 40 staff instructors and charge $85-$115 an hour to teach children in clients' homes.

``There's a lot of money around, and parents see that neighbors and friends are hiring tutors, too,'' Levine says. ``There's certainly no shortage of clients.''

Levine says he's just received a call from a mother seeking tutoring for a child who isn't reading well enough. The child is 5 years old.

References
Tutoring
Inspirica
Advantage Testing
Exclusive Education
Ivy League Tutors

Others
Hallowell Center
Education Conservancy
National Tutoring Association
Education Industry Association