“Push for A’s at Private School is Keeping Costly Tutors Busy”, an article in today’s New York Times, details the extensive and expensive tutoring underground in NYC private schools. According to this article, which can be found here, over half of the students in NYC private schools hire tutors during the course of their K-12 years. The article highlights one mom who confesses to spending $35,000 on top of the school’s $38,000+ tuition to get her son through one of his high school years.

While examples like these tend to represent the extreme and not the norm, even spending a small percentage of this sum on tutoring can break many a parent’s budget. The article’s revelation that a great many parents are paying well above the tuition to help their children succeed bears noting, and begs the question: if many of us don’t know about this underground and/or aren’t prepared to pay to play, query whether this could be contributing to the achievement gap in private schools?