We signed up for some coaching for our high achieving son at this place because it was recommended by a friend. What we discovered was that they may be very good for students who are behind or have emotional or learning issues, but they are not effective for boosting an already high-achieving kid. I have broken the review into three areas below:
The Consult
The two main directors: Joanne and something starting with an M, come across as very knowledgeable and competent during the consult. It is only later, during execution, that you find out that they really may not have given you all the information you needed, and are very disorganized. In our case, we were there for high school admissions test prep. My son took a sample test to create a baseline, and then we met with both directors for an hour. Their "scoring system" was broken when we arrived for our consult, and Joanne rushed to score manually, making us wait 45 minutes. She then read us his seemingly excellent scores, which turned out later to be wrong...he did even better than their first guess. Nonetheless, they rallied and described what sounded like a solid plan to push him over the top, address his weak areas, and put him in position for "scholarship money," according to Joanne. Since many of the private high schools we are looking at are pricey, that, of course, appealed to us. Later, it turned out that they really didn't know what constituted a "great" score, which affected the direction of our tutoring, and most of the schools don't offer merit-based "scholarship money."
We never were able to receive a copy of his actual baseline scores. Every time I requested a copy of his scores, they were somehow in the possession of the other director who was not there at the time.
The Environment
There are no private spaces for your child to be tutored. You go to the center, and they seem to have a very high concentration of kids with behavioral and learning issues who wander around and often interrupt other students being tutored. They will not allow the parents to go back and see where their child will be tutored or to meet the tutors...that should have been a show-stopper for me. But I was trusting that recommendation from my close friend!
The Actual Tutoring
Their tutoring is EXPENSIVE. If it had been effective, it is probably a competitive price. I don't want to write a book here, so suffice it to say that the tutors themselves were actually probably (since I didn't meet them) very good. The problems with the tutoring were with the architecture...I believe that points to the directors. They made commitments as to what would be covered that were not met. They never worked with him on his essay, for example, which they promised the first day. They did not seem to know how to craft a tutoring approach that was specific to him and focused on his weaker areas, but, rather, they stuck to their formulaic book and forced him to waste precious (expensive) time on subject matter that he had mastered...of which there was a great deal. So, not surprisingly, there was not enough time to adequately address the areas he truly needed help on. When I addressed the fact that his major weakness was vocabulary and they had spent no time at all on that, I was told by Joanne that they couldn't help him with that, that was up to him. Huh!?!? And, of course, when he finally took the real test, that's where he fell down. And his other scores, overall, went down or stayed the same.
I wrote two emails to the Executive Director, Karen Donald, and received no response. Overall, a VERY disappointing and costly experience. read more
