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Friday, September 21, 2012

Tutors for kindergarteners (and younger kids too) - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Tutors for kindergarteners (and younger kids too) - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

Answer Sheet


Tutors for kindergarteners (and younger kids too)

How obsessed have schools become in preparing young kids to take tests and achieve in academics? This much: Tutors for kindergarteners — and preschoolers — have become commonplace.

(Mark Bugnaski/AP)
You might think this is something that would be popular in New York City or Washington D.C. But go to Clay County, Missouri, and you can find plenty of folks willing to help bring kindergarteners who may already be behind in their studies up to speed — for a price.
At the top of this webpage, which lists names and credentials of tutors, it says:

Here are 136 Clay County Kindergarten tutors ranked by student rating and relevance

Some tutors charge the families of kindergarteners $35 per hour, others $45, and at least one, a special education teacher, charges $60 per 

A primer on gap years

It’s the season when high school seniors are frantically filling out college applications and trying to figure out where they will be and what they will be doing next fall.
There is some evidence that a growing number of U.S. high school graduates are taking a year off before going to college. But there are questions about how gap years work, and who they benefit and what colleges think about them.
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Why the ‘rithmetic of school reform doesn’t add up

Sometimes things about school reform just don’t add up. Here, Larry Lee, the former director of the Center for Rural Alabama who coordinated the study, Lessons Learned from Rural Schools, tries to do the math. He can be reached at larrylee33@knology.net
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New research casts doubt on key theory of vocabulary learning

There are times when we learn that something we thought was true is actually incorrect. Cognitive scientistDaniel Willingham tells us about a new such episode here. Willingham is professor and director of graduate studies in psychology at the University of Virginia and author of “Why Don’t Students Like School?” His latest book is “When Can You Trust The Experts? How to tell good science from bad in education.” This appeared on his Science and Education blog.
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