Best Math Tutoring
Hi, I’m Dawn! I created this blog after researching five different tutoring companies for my daughter, McKenzie. In the end, I rated Learner.com the highest because they helped bring McKenzie's Math grade from a D to an A.
Hi, I’m Dawn! I created this blog after researching five different tutoring companies for my daughter, McKenzie. In the end, I rated Learner.com the highest because they helped bring McKenzie's Math grade from a D to an A.
Winner: Learner.com ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.8/5
McKenzie's Math grade went from a D to an A in two months!
Runner Up: Wyzant ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.5/5
Varsity Tutors ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.3/5
Khan Academy ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.1/5
Tutor.com ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 3.8/5
Winner: Learner
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 4.8 out of 5 stars
✅ Pros:
⛔️️ Cons:
*We took advantage of the $25 initial trial session promotion. Check it out before it goes away!
⭐ Overall Rating ️
My ABSOLUTE favorite! Learner really blew me away, first and foremost, with how much thought they put into matching your child with a tutor that fits their learning style, personality, and needs. It was almost as if our tutor, Madison, had known McKenzie for a while. They instantly hit it off and she could tell that McKenzie was more of a visual learner and tailored her entire lesson plan to play off of that. Additionally, she picked up pretty quickly that McKenzie does not do as well with lectures and so she cut them short, spending way more time going straight into exercises. We've been using Learner for several months now and we're never looking back.
❤️ What I love ️
The most important thing for me is how personalized their service is to my child. That was the most important thing for me because the goal was to help McKenzie improve. They are the best at that no questions asked. I also really like how rigorous they are about choosing their tutors and they were one of the few companies that had an impressive process for interviewing (I interviewed every company on this to see how seriously they took tutor recruitment). Last thing I'll say here is it's been really easy to grab more hours here and there with them as needed, which has been a huge blessing because sometimes we need extra help for tougher subjects.
🙈 What could be better
This is on the higher end of tutoring services in terms of cost, which I was hesitant about paying at first. The way I've thought about it though is that its an investment in McKenzie's education and overtime I think she'll need less tutoring as she improves.
My daughter is excited about doing her homework now!
Remote learning has really taken a toll on my daughter who was usually pretty good in math and we’ve never had any issues, but slowly her grades started dropping. She felt she had to learn things herself as she wasn’t responding well to her teacher’s methods. As moms do, I felt her pain and decided to step in and try to help -- looking back now, that wasn’t the best decision. The daily battles began, and I couldn’t help but feel that our amazing relationship was being affected by her Math homework! Out of all things that can cause issues between parents and teens, I didn’t want math to be it.
Because of all this, I decided to find a Math Tutor for her, even though McKenzie
wasn’t really on board with the plan. I just couldn’t handle any more arguing or seeing her feel like she was failing. I didn’t know where to start, so my Type-A personality kicked in and I decided to test and do some research on the best math tutoring services I found.
Learner was about the third service I contacted, and honestly, I was a bit tired and feeling a little crazy for doing this research -- on top of that McKenzie was still struggling with math. As soon as I filled out some info, I got a call from Learner’s CEO right away. I was intimidated at first because I didn’t expect he’d be the one calling, but once we got talking, I got talking. Maybe he was a therapist in some past life, but wow did I open up and he understood my struggle completely. The release was unexplainable, finally I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
I decided to start with them right away because they have a first session 100% free offer. No brainer there. McKenzie liked it and I saw how the tutor was patient in a way that I just couldn’t be anymore, so we continued. Within 2 weeks I could see the change in my daughter. The fights were gone and she actually acknowledged it was working (that’s quite the win with a teenager!)
I could see McKenzie being proud of what she was learning, her grades were improving, and the arguing was gone! We both wanted to continue with Learner because of the the quality of the tutor, the personalized attention....and the results.
McKenzie's Math grade moved from a D to an A.
Check out all my research and comparison chart below, every family’s situation is different, but I hope this helps any struggling parent in making the right decision!
✅ Pros:
⛔️️ Cons:
⭐ Overall Rating
Wyzant is another great option. Their platform is incredibly intuitive and easy to use, which is helpful in the world of online. Additionally, if tutoring for other subjects like chemistry, english, etc is important to you they have got you covered with a wide range and breadth of subjects. Lastly, anytime I've tried to call the company they have been easy to talk to and extremely helpful with any problems I have had.
❤️ What I love ️
The online platform is incredible. It's so fun, easy to use, and great to play around with. I also love how if we need different tutors for different subjects we can browse for them directly here. As a result, we've used Wyzant as a backup tutoring platform for subjects like chemistry and english.
🙈 What could be better
The personalization. Thankfully McKenzie's toughest subject is math and she's covered with Learner. Wyzant is pretty good for here other subjects (english and chemistry), but I wish Wyzant took more time to understand my child's learning style and did a better job on getting her a tutor that was effective for her because then I might consider switching.
Additionally, no one was available to help me sort through my options. I signed up and got 5 emails from different tutors but had no idea how to choose which one to work with!
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Wyzant Teaching Platform
✅ Pros:
⛔️️ Cons:
What I love:
The largest selection of subjects
The most availability of tutors
Very cost effective
Easy to use and intuitive platform
What could be better:
Personalization and child tutor matching
⭐ Overall Rating
Varsity Tutors is definitely the biggest tutoring service out there. It's amazing and almost overwhelming when you first look through their site because of the sheer number of subjects available. This service could feasibly cover McKenzie through college. I think they do a very good job in quantity and having you covered for any life event, but the quality start to drop off pretty far from Wyzant and Learner
❤️ What I love ️
That McKenzie could access a tutor for probably any subject she would ever need.
🙈 What could be better
Personalization and vetting of tutors. Having gone through their process I get a sense they are looking to work with as many people as possible vs. ensuring every child is the most successful. They do a good job, but it was not good enough for me to trust McKenzie's success with them.
Varsity Tutors
✅ Pros:
⛔️️ Cons:
What I love:
World class instructors
Extremely easy to follow step by step tutoring
Very cost effective
Great discussion forums
What could be better:
No personalization
No live tutoring expertise
⭐ Overall Rating
If your child enjoys online learning and is curious by nature this might be the right tool for them. You get access to the world's expert tutors who have made recordings and broken down subjects into step by step lessons. McKenzie actually use Khan Academy a good amount to supplement her tutoring because the experts on their are phenomenal and often times its much easier to take in than what she gets in class.
❤️ What I love️
How they make complicated subjects to simple to understand and pick up. As well as the fact that they break it down into step by step courses.
🙈 What could be better
There is no tutor working one on one with McKenzie and because she struggles with math that extra live guidance to troubleshoot what she is not understanding has been particularly important. Khan Academy can be a great tool if your child has the ability to learn on their own as it simplifies lesson plans a good deal.
Khan Academy Platform
✅ Pros:
⛔️️ Cons:
What I love:
Extremely cost effective
Extensive variety of subjects
On-demand tutoring service
What could be better:
No personalization
Lower quality tutors
⭐ Overall Rating
Tutor.com is an interesting service and backed by the Princeton review, which peaked my interest. Overall this is a budget friendly option and great for anyone that is looking to stretch their dollars when it comes to tutoring.
❤️ What I love️
I love how cost effective this service is and have considered using it for subjects that I think McKenzie needs incremental help with. Additionally, I like their "on demand" tutoring service for one-off homework McKenzie might need help with. You get a different tutor each time, but its a great option in a pinch.
🙈 What could be better
The tutors are mainly college and high school students that get paid $15/hr so as you can imagine the quality is dramatically different from a service where you get a professional tutor. Specifically, these are really smart students but they are not necessarily good tutors (coaches) and have less experience working through different situations.
Tutor.com mission statement
My training course line-up and checklist!
My process evaluating tutor services
There are so many different tutoring formats as well as kinds of tutoring organizations that I needed to understand which would work best for my daughter.
Online was the best option for my daughter for a few different reasons:
PROS
🎓 Easier To Find The Best Fit Tutor For Your Child - When you're constricted to in-person the pool of tutors that are available shrinks dramatically. For tutoring to work it was so key that McKenzie liked the tutor and they could connect with her and her learning style. Online tutoring made that 10X easier.
⭐ Higher Quality Tutors- This is similar to point one but when I compared in-person vs. online the difference in quality was pretty obvious. While there were high quality tutors in our area they were usually booked up and it was much harder to get one that had great credentials (hours of experience, breadth of knowledge on different subjects, and had a proven track record of helping kids take off).
🗓 Availability - My daughter has a busy schedule (she plays waterpolo and volunteers) so the times that she can get tutored are constrained. Additionally, depending on how hard the subject matter is for an upcoming test she may need more or less hours. As a result, I need flexible tutoring hours. With online, the tutors have more availability since they don't have to travel and it has been much easier to ramp up and ramp down. Additionally, I've gotten two tutors that work well for my daughter so in case one can't I've got a backup!
💵 Cost Effective - Tutors can work with more clients online and online tutoring businesses have way less overhead since they are digital. As a result, I've found that when you compare tutoring services that are the same level of quality (important that you're comparing apples to apples) online is generally more cost-effective.
CONS
🖥 Zoomed Out - Especially in COVID era more video calls can take their toll and I know McKenzie has definitely complained about zoom fatigue. As a result, if you're adamant about no video because you want your child off the screen this might not be a good option.
👋 In-Person Relationship - If you value meeting your tutor in person and developing an extremely close relationship with them this is not the way to do it. You don't hang out with them before tutoring starts and you don't get to chat after. As a result, I have not developed as close of a relationship with my daughter's tutors with online.
Me working with my daughter on a math problem
I need to put a quick disclaimer here on the importance of choosing a professional tutor vs. working with a local college student. Here were my takeaways after trying both:
👩🏫 Professional Tutors Give You Professional Results - When you're working with a tutor that does it for a profession they are much more effective because they have 1000s of hours of experience. They have seen it all, they are more organized, they have all the tools, frameworks, and tricks. Additionally, they have worked with a variety of children. Getting the local college student to tutor my kid failed miserably. It was much cheaper than other tutoring services but I basically threw money away because they were not very effective.
Considering all of my important factors for a tutoring service (listed above), I created this comparison chart with the help of a friend (he's a teacher that also uses online tutoring for his son!). Everything here can be found on the respective course's website.
Personalization
Tutor Quality
Availability & Flexibility
Cost
Fun & Ease of Use
Ideal Training Course
5
5
5
5
Wyzant
2
4
5
$20-$100+/hr
5
Varsity Tutors
4
3.5
5
$70-95/hr
4
Khan Academy
3
N/A
3
Free
3
Tutor.com
2
2
5
$40/hr
4
So to recap, I didn't go into this thinking I'd fall in love with a specific tutoring service or that one would have significant advantages over the other. To be honest, I thought there would be a ton of overlap and similarity but this research and signing up to Learner has been well worth it for the higher price. Learner puts so much effort into personalization and recruiting high quality tutors that you really get your money's worth.
All in all if cost is the most important concern this probably won't be the right program for you. Additionally, if you're child is a self-starter than Khan Academy is probably your best best. Lastly, if you really want to do in person and that is super important you I would think about going with Wyzant.
Overall I'm thrilled that I have a tutoring service I have a ton of confidence in. If you're like me, keeping things simple makes motherhood a much more sane place to be!
Hi, I’m Dawn! I created this blog after researching five different tutoring companies for my daughter, McKenzie. In the end, I rated Learner.com the highest because they helped bring McKenzie's Math grade from a D to an A.
