If tutors really do reliably produce two-sigma learning gains, then why aren't most top achievers the product of tutors? Yes, they're expensive, but perhaps "only" 2-3x private school; there are a lot of wealthy parents. Diminishing returns for high achievers?
Conversation
Hypo: If in a lockstep formal curriculum, gains-to-tutoring are lower (you can't quite "skip ahead" 1.7 months, it's a year or nothing), so tutor-like investment happens in environments with gradual slopes, not steps (e.g., debate, working in a science lab, the examples you list)
1
5
Replying to
Right, but there are enough rich parents who could use tutors to remove their children from such curricula that you'd expect those students to dominate the arena of top performers!
Replying to
In all seriousness -- how would those rich parents get tutored kids into college? Barring the very top examples (e.g., kid is on track to be a Fields Medal mathematician), being just "more smart" seems less valuable to getting into college than "more success" in extracurriculars
3
3
(I'm purely describing what I see here, not saying it seems right or wrong, to be very very clear)
How could you do this while retaining some amount of socialization/generalized knowledge? I imagine there aren’t many parents (wealthy or not) that would choose to have their children forego ‘regular/public/private’ education for exclusively a tutor experience.