Traditional Tutoring Disappoints

Many people are looking for a tutor to help their child, in the hopes that they will find an individual who can see their child’s difficulties and guide them to success via one to one attention. Frankly, such an approach is rarely successful.



The Learning Path is Different

The Learning Path employs many former tutors, intelligent and caring people who want to do the best for their students. These are people who are highly capable in Math, Reading, and Writing, and who were very successful in school. So why do they prefer to work with The Learning Path instead of on their own?

Our Difference is More Effective

Our employees are able to have a far greater impact on their students than they were able to achieve as independent tutors. In the traditional tutoring scenario, a student comes to a tutor with their school homework. The student then completes that homework with the tutor, who explains how to do it to the student. This can lead to temporary success but rarely resolves the underlying causes of the student’s difficulties, which range from study skills and confidence to large gaps in underlying knowledge.

Mapping out your Child’s Knowledge

Difficulty with school homework is usually the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a student’s difficulties. The Learning Path often finds that students who are struggling with their school homework are in fact 2-3 years behind, or more, in their knowledge of the material. The only way to get them up to speed is to go back and cover the missing underlying foundations. To use the analogy of home construction, if the third story of a building is leaning over and collapsing, the foundations underneath usually need to be addressed. An individual tutor simply does not have the tools to do this. They can see that the third story is leaning over, but they have no means to get to the foundations.

From the Foundations Up

At The Learning Path, we plumb the foundations. We recently had a student in Grade 8 test as low as Grade 3, for example. The only way to truly discover this was through adaptive computer testing. Using individualized lesson plans derived from this testing, we were able to lift that student by two years in less than five months, verified by further independent testing. At such a pace we can lift a student from five years behind grade level to a mastery of grade level in approximately one year. This is a year of much hard work and dedication, and requires the student to face up to the challenge and to own it, but it is entirely possible. An individual tutor would rarely be able to achieve such an outcome, and there would be no way of verifying what impact that they had had even if they did. The Learning Path can.

Much More than Tutoring

The Learning Path is in the general category of supplemental education and tutoring, but is much more than that. We fear that tutoring creates dependent students, students who increasingly struggle to succeed without their tutor. At best tutoring is little more than “homework babysitting” most of the time.

Our extensive diagnostics in contrast use computer adaptive tests that map out your child’s knowledge objectively and independently. This gives us a baseline to start from, and a map of their strengths and weaknesses. From such a map we are able to create an individualized lesson plan that will resolve their fundamental struggles one by one, covering any missing holes in their knowledge before moving on. The Learning Path then retests students at an appropriate interval to see what progress has been made. Not only does this give us an evolving individualized lesson plan, but it also gives the parents some idea of what progress has been made.

We Foster Independent Learning & Strong Study Skills

Our philosophy embraces study skills and independent learning. Our goal is to foster capable and independent students, people who can learn concepts by studying examples and who are unafraid to give it a try on their own. Many students exclaim that they cannot do something, only to find that they can with a little positive encouragement, and some guidance as to how to learn.

In sum we want our students to move forward successfully and independently, and ultimately not need our services.