Comment by cwal37 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cwal37 | Hacker News Reader

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> But it’s a few thousand dollars if that (as low as under $1,000) which is reachable to all but destitute families.

I live in Arlington, so not Fairfax, but in a neighborhood that borders Fairfax (and not really that far away from TJ either). The median household income for our census tract was about a 3rd of the county's average, ~$40k vs ~$120k when I looked into it a few years back. Which is also indicative of the Fairfax areas around me. It's not like America has much in the way of generic social support to make it easier for folks like that to spend a couple thousand on some extra tutoring, plus the cost here is higher because there are so many affluent folks to drive up the price of a tutor. This also isn't a small number of people, it's a really dense area down here relative to other parts of Northern Virginia (including parts with substantially better transit access and more walkable communities).

Northern Virginia has some pretty unique pockets, my zip code is one of the most diverse in the entire country[0], and a bit south of me in Fairfax is the only other one Virginia has in the top 100, but also quite a bit of poverty in those same unique areas. Idk, I just wouldn't paint with such a broad brush, when I know very few folks on my block with kids could just spend a few thousand on extra tutoring.

[0]https://medium.com/@waldoch/measuring-neighborhood-diversity...

I got the impression that he meant $1,000 total, not recurring. Surely most people can scrape together $1,000 over years, if it’s made a priority.

A potential disconnect is the timeframes, I would guess they went to school there decades ago? I have limited direct experience with the tutoring market here, having moved to the area as an adult without kids, but do have a family member and a colleague who did it for some extra cash and the costs I was hearing then (~4-5 years ago) were more like thousands. If I think about folks with kids on my block - again, limited to my direct experience (although within a fairly dense and lower income neighborhood), people are working as movers, maids, day laborers, random car fixing and odd jobs, etc. I wouldn't doubt that the next step up of folks like construction workers or mechanics employed full-time could cover a cheaper tutor, but these costs are simply not negligible. It's not a cheap place to live in to begin with.

There was an article in the mid 2015 timeframe about how the low income Chinese kids in NYC go to this prep center that’s $800 for a summer. Note that for the most part these are group classes, not 1:1, so you’re amortizing the cost over 6-8 kids in a small group.

No, they’re not “negligible.” And frankly I think opponents of standardized testing really overestimate how much test prep even helps. TJ is 70% Asian and only about 25% white, in an area where the median white household income is well north of $100,000/year. If test prep is what causes that disparity, as people suggest, then it’s worth it even if it’s a “substantial” rather than “negligible” expense. Outside the very bottom rung,[1] it’s a matter of financial priorities.

[1] That very bottom rung is quite a small percentage of the population. Keep in mind that only a few percent of the population makes minimum wage, and most of those people don’t have school-aged kids.

A one-time expensive of a couple of thousand or so is not unaffordable on $40k/year. And note also that the median household income of Black households is over $60,000/year in Arlington, and $80,000 for Hispanics. In Fairfax County, it’s close to $100,000/year for both Black and Hispanic households.

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