What's an hour of teaching worth? Data and transparency in tutoring | Hacker News Reader

What's an hour of teaching worth? Data and transparency in tutoring

blog.tutorspree.com

32 pointsakharris12 comments

Good read. My wife actually quit as a teacher in DC (mostly b/c of Teach for America but that is a different story) and started tutoring.

It took her about 6 months to get set up with a good reliable set of clients. She was able to charge about 50% more per hour than she made as a teacher (like the article says) however that still did not mean that she made more. First off, tutoring of school aged kids in DC happens in the suburbs so her daily commute doubled to tripled. Next, she went on my health care. And lastly even before those other problems, she still couldn't book anywhere near the same number of hours (as any good freelancer should know) and so was lucky to make 70% what she made before. It still was the right choice as TfA was terrible but just a data point.

Side note for Tutorspree: While we lived in Northern Virginia that shouldn't prevent the listing from showing up in DC. Just the 2 cents why my wife tried to use your service and then quit.

Can you share the Teach for America experience? I hear good things, but want your data point

We've had a few issues with travel radius/dual location listing. Very sorry she quit - drop me an email (aaron [at] tutorspree) and I'll take a look, if you like.

For what it's worth, a starting teacher in my district (a suburb of Austin, TX) would make $42,000 a year, for a 187-day contract. Assuming 8-hour days (admittedly unrealistic for a first-year tech), that's $28 an hour.

I personally charge $40-50 an hour for one-one-one tutoring.

Interesting. The overall average salary for teacher in Texas comes in at $49,900 (in 2009). I suppose that leads to a slightly higher rate, but the 8 hour day piece doesn't come close to accounting for all of the associated prep time. My guess is that, when you figure that in, the hourly rate for real work drops a lot further.

My mom was a high-school teacher and definitely had that impression, that tutoring paid more than a regular teaching job. The main pros of teaching are that it's very stable work, rather than fluctuating as tutoring jobs tend to, and typically comes with good benefits (not as big a deal for healthy twenty-somethings, but group health insurance can be quite important if you're older and have a family). It's also somewhat different work, teaching a longer-term curriculum to a classroom of students rather than doing one-on-one tutoring; that can be either a pro or con for a lot of reasons.

Right. One of the questions we want to answer is whether or not tutoring isn't a full time job for more people is a result of an absolute lack of demand, or lack of appropriate channels for that demand.

If you knew you could fill 35 hours a week as a tutor at a $50 rate, and do it consistently, would you (hypothetical you that is a teacher)? If you knew that you would have a consistent relationship with a student and actually guide his/her education, how would that change the dynamic? Is something like the old school meaning of "tutor" (Socrates/Alexander) possible at scale in the modern US?

Anyway, all that and more as we get more data together...

On the latter parts, I'm currently an (early-career) college prof and would seriously consider switching to that model if it existed/worked. I'd much prefer tutoring people outside the institutional framework of curricula/grades/exams/lectures if it were reasonably stable work you could earn a living at, with genuinely interested students. There are some good things about the formalized education system, but in large part it's a compromise due to the need to produce some kind of credential employers recognize (related but not identical to "actual learning"), and to make budgets work.

Though I'm less interested if, like some tutoring jobs, it's just helping people cram for SATs, and especially if that's really seasonal work that only happens around SAT-time. So I wish you luck. :)

Yes, in my district teacher salaries range from $42,000 to $60,000 depending on experience (0 to 30 years of experience, respectively).

My first year teaching I'd estimate I put in 70 hours a week. Now (with fifteen years of experience) it's 40-50, though it does spike up periodically.

However, teachers of core subjects (esp. math, English and history) have so much more grading than I that they work a lot more hours.

Most good tutors would probably be working around 20 hours a week, with an additional 10-20 hours of unpaid preparation time. This explains the disparity with teacher salaries.

I don't think this does explain the disparity. Most core teachers I know also have an additional 10-20 hours of "unpaid" prep time. (Time outside that 40 hours, anyway.)

I think the disparity is more reflected in the relative value of one-on-one instruction vs. what you typically see in a classroom (closer to 30:1).

I also left teaching to tutor. Although it was difficult to leave my students in east Oakland after dedicating three years of my life to helping them succeed in math, I was done with 80 hour high stress work weeks and 40k a year. I now charge around $50 an hour for 1 to 1 tutoring. It is the easiest money I have ever made. From a financial perspective, becoming a puplic school teacher is pure foolishness.

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