The ABC's of finding the right tutor

Thomas Glennon, 11, has 4,000 tokens. He's saving them up to earn a stuffed Bart Simpson, lava lamp, or some other treat. And lest you think Glennon has earned these tokens at an amusement park, think again: They are rewards from the Sylvan Learning center in Norwood, where the fourth-grader is enrolled for reading assistance.

"The funniest thing is that he loves it," said his mother, Kathy. "He's reading more on his own and now has the confidence to read out loud in front of other kids in the classroom."

Although tutoring may be the farthest thing from your mind -- after all, it's summer and it seems as if school just ended -- Kurt Mueller, director of The Learning Lab at Lesley University said it's important to remain focused on educational issues this time of year before the mad rush of school preparations.

"For students with learning problems, when summertime comes, things get shoved in the corner and forgotten about. But problems almost always resurface again," Mueller said. "Kids are more successful if parents kick-start things in August as opposed to September."

The $5.2 billion tutoring industry encompasses private tutors; national commercial tutoring centers such as Sylvan, Kumon, and Huntington Learning; and online tutors, which include homework help sites, one-on-one tutoring, and step-by-step software.

Carolyn Eggert of Newton has used private tutors for her son, Ben, 13. She employs teachers from the city's elementary schools because they are familiar with the curriculum. "I also wanted his tutors to have some sort of relationship with his teachers, whether it was e-mail or an occasional phone call," she said.

Others parents, such as Glennon, prefer the small group interaction at places such as Sylvan, believing these classes offer a more social setting. At Sylvan and other centers, typically there is one tutor for three to five students, who are all working on different lesson plans. Often incentives are given as a way of making learning fun, such as with Kumon's Cosmic Club, where 50 points can earn a two-way radio and 150 points gets a Gameboy Advance SP.

Online tutoring services offer 24-hour access; computer-savvy kids often are comfortable chatting with tutors using instant messaging and can enjoy features such as an interactive whiteboard, available on Tutor.com and other sites.

Expect to pay $30 to $70 an hour for a private tutor; $600 to $1,400 for a fixed number of sessions over a three- to four-month period for a commercial center; and a monthly fee of $35 to $130 for online tutoring, said Adam Newman, an analyst at Eduventures Inc., an educational marketing and consulting firm in Boston.

Effective tutoring programs have several things in common, according to Reading Rockets, a national non profit educational initiative. These include: well-trained tutors who closely coordinate with classroom teachers, structured sessions that reinforce correct responses, and careful monitoring of progress. And the more frequent the tutoring sessions, the better.

"When parents pursue tutoring, I advise them to make sure the tutoring plan has measurable goals and outcomes set in writing before you start," said Mueller of the Learning Lab. "The child and tutor need to be held accountable."

Mueller said some examples of achievable goals include increasing the number of words a child reads per minute, increasing fluency or decoding skills, or coming closer to grade-level reading performance.

And although tutoring can help improve math, reading, writing, or standardized test performance, Newman said that as part of any tutoring experience, students usually also learn study skills.

"I was at my breaking point," said Kathy Glennon of Walpole, "spending two to three hours a night trying to help my son Tom do his homework, screaming like a maniac. But now, after a year of tutoring, he's finally reading at grade level."

And he's still saving those tokens.