Claire Dinshaw ’17 and Molly Liebergall ’17
In early May, English teachers Brian Tippy and Samantha Ginzberg dealt with two separate incidents of cheating as a result of the same tutor editing two students’ papers. The incidents have prompted a discussion regarding the ethics of tutoring.
“When I took a look at what the tutor had done and saw the timestamps,” Ginzberg said, addressing the incident that occurred in her class, “the tutor had gone into the paper while the student was in school, while the student was not on the document. That’s where it crossed over the line.”
Although Tippy declined to speak specifically about the recent incident in his class, he said he has dealt with four occurrences over the past few years where a parent or tutor was inappropriately involved in the completion of an assignment, and he believes these two most recent incidents are simply symptoms of a larger problem of tutor overreach at Staples.
According to the student handbook, inappropriately using the services of another person, such as a tutor, is considered cheating.
“There are ranges of consequences [for cheating], which could mean grade changes from you get a zero to you have to redo [the assignment],” Principal James D’Amico said. “Those decisions are really in the hands of the teacher and their department chair.”
Both Trey Billings, co-president of Freudigman & Billings (F&B), a tutoring company, and Jay Mudholkar ’17, president of Top Hat Tutors, a student run tutoring company, emphasized that they work to ensure students have ownership of their own work.
“What we’ve done, it is very similar to what kids would do by talking with each other about these ideas, talking to their parents, which I know goes on a ton,” Billings said. “Except some of the people on staff have degrees in writing or have more skill in helping kids think through these tasks than perhaps parents would.”
Mudholkar echoed this stance, saying he has never heard of a case where a tutor working for Top Hat Tutors crossed any ethical boundary when helping a student.
However, Ginzberg, who is a tutor herself, does believe the tutor in question took advantage of her student.
“I truly believe that this tutor instilled a trust within that student,” Ginzberg said, “and then that student is like ‘Okay this person is getting paid; this person is a professional in the field.’”
Bridget Mulloy ’19 feels that there are times tutors put students in an uncomfortable position.
“I know when I went to F&B for midterm review, the tutor there asked me for my username and password for Schoology and HomeAccess so we could go over test units that I didn’t score well on,” Mulloy said. “I didn’t feel comfortable writing it down, so I just typed it into the computer and logged out after the session.”
Billings responded to Mulloy, saying students are not required to give their tutors their passwords.
“Students do not need to share their login information with us,” Billings said. “But most students understand how helpful it is for their tutor to come to their session prepared and are happy to share information with us about how they are doing in their classes.”
Although D’Amico said that Staples has no short term plans to change any policies in response to the two recent incidents, he did ask tutors to reflect.
“Think about the decision that you’re making when you are working with a student,” D’Amico said. “You are helping them, but the work is theirs.”
Tippy believes the inappropriate use of tutors is tied to an inaccurate perception of the purpose of school work.
“At some point, we have to remember that the point of writing an essay is to learn how to write an essay, not to produce an essay,” Tippy said. “Students would rather have an ‘A’ essay turned in than write a really great B+ essay themselves, and I think that’s a crazy system.”
Billings said that many of his clients do have some expectations of grades improving. However, Billings believes that the frequent use of tutors is tied, not to grade expectations, but to a lack of teacher availability.
“Here AP teachers are too busy tutoring,” Billings said. “Stamford High School [and] West Hill actually have money in the budget to pay people to come in to do extra AP prep for the students in that school.”
Julie Heller, the English department chair at Staples High School, countered this claim, saying that all teachers at Staples are available for 45 minutes either before or after school.
“That time specifically is meant to provide students the opportunity to meet with their teachers as needed,” Heller said.
Students also noted that there is a prejudice in the Staples community against seeking outside help from tutors.
“I think there is a stigma attached to it, If you go to a tutor, that it is almost receiving a kind of boost that other kids don’t,” Mulloy said. “Some people think it’s unfair, especially since not everyone can afford to go to $100 tutoring sessions.”
“I know there are a lot of stigmas surrounding tutoring based on who you go to for tutoring,” Rachel Seidman ’17 said. “[But] with the very competitive environment at staples I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting help from tutors when you’re not receiving the attention you need from teachers.”
Billings responded to some of the prejudice against F&B, saying he wants people to know the company’s focus is students’ education.
“I think my biggest concern is that people understand that our goal is to help kids learn, that that’s fundamentally what we are trying to accomplish,” Billings said. “We want to see students understand material better.”
*As part of Inklings editorial policy of maintaining journalistic independence and ensuring unbiased reporting, neither Dinshaw nor Liebergall has been tutored. Billings disagreed with this decision. In the interest of a balanced viewpoint, we are printing his opinion here: “It seems quite possible that reporters could be biased against tutoring in just the same way that those who have been tutored could be biased in favor of it […] I’m a little surprised that the Inklings editorial staff didn’t decide to assign the article to one reporter from each perspective in order to counterbalance the potential for bias either way.”