Plano's Secret: the Tutoring Industry

I just about choke when I hear a PISD Trustee brag about the great job they do. Many parents break their backs to compensate for the shortcomings in the Plano curriculum so our children can succeed in spite of the problems with the curriculum.

For years I sent my daughter to a Chinese school on Sunday for math. Two of her classmates were at that same Chinese school. There were hundreds of children at this one school, and that is not the only Chinese school around.

There are many Kumon centers, and a large number of different tutoring businesses.

It is a lot of work and pressure on a parent who wants to do the tutoring himself. It is almost overwhelming.

Here is an email I received from a parent:
"The education my child is receiving [in Plano] is not good. If you came to my house, you would think I home school. Our living room has book shelves full of books, workbooks, flash cards, learning games, manipulatives, etc. I shop at all the local teacher stores, have several shelves worth of textbooks, and spend as much time as possible online to learn how to teach him the concepts he is missing out on at school."

Parents, through personally tutoring their own children or by paying for tutoring, are the source of PISD success. The PISD Administration and Board of Trustees has let us down and forced us to tutor our children for the basics.

Karen Dillard's program is outstanding for SAT, ACT, and the PSAT tests. The PSAT tutoring is how Plano gets National Merit Scholarships.

The Plano ISD Administration has fouled up the elementary school curriculum. They are in the process of fouling up the middle-school math curriculum with Connected Math. The tutoring industry has been keeping Plano ISD afloat. But if the Adminstration fouls up the high schools next, the damage might be more that the tutoring industry can float.

I am very worried that Plano ISD is going to sink. We need new blood on the Board of Trustees to halt the decay in our school quality.

Vote for Robert Canright