I was confused as to why the tutoring company had even accepted the student. He wasn’t in Kindergarten, and yet he was coming in twice a week to work on first and second grade academic skills. It didn’t make sense. Why did anyone think this kid needed extra tutoring? It was an ethical dilemma for me. Finally, I approached the parent.
“So, your son is absolutely delightful. I love working with him. However, I have to admit that I don’t understand why you are paying for tutoring. He is fine. He is more than fine.”
“He needs to score higher on the entrance exam,” she explained.
“The entrance exam?”
“Yes. To get into X school. He only scored at the 97th percentile and in order to get in, he needs to score above the 98th percentile.”
“Okay,” I muttered. I must have still looked confused because the parent continued.
“They have the highest scores of all of the private schools in our area. The highest. He must get in. It’s the only option.”
I paused and asked, “Do you think that they have the highest scores because they only let in the kids with the highest scores? I wonder if it would really be good for your charming little boy, who is clearly intelligent, to be the lowest student in that school. Don’t you think it would be better for him to be the highest performing student in another school?”
Somehow, I didn’t lose my job.
The above may seem like an extreme example, and I wish that it was an outlier, but I have had versions of this conversation my whole career.
To be continued…