Over the years, I’ve talked to countless parents who have decided to hire their student’s high school math teacher for SAT or ACT prep. In most cases, I think that’s a mistake. I’m going to explain why.
First, let me be clear: there are some high school math teachers who really are good SAT and ACT tutors. However, I’m of the view that they are fit for SAT and ACT prep due to their specific knowledge about the SAT and ACT, not because their role as a high school math teacher has particularly good crossover into the test prep world.
High school math and test prep math — especially SAT math — are very, very different beasts. In general, high school math:
- Covers more difficult content than test prep math
- Is more likely to involve following steps than test prep math
- Requires less critical thinking than test prep math
These points are a big enough deal that a lot of students who are great at high school math struggle with test prep math. Their struggles aren’t due to them being bad math students. They are often due to the wrong approach. Test prep math cannot be solved in the same way high school math can.
I think very highly of high school teachers, and math teachers are no exception. However, students who are preparing for the SAT and ACT must prepare in a very different manner than they prepare for tests in high school. The clearest way to demonstrate this might be to show you two representative problems:
Here is a calculus problem an advanced high school student might see on a test:
Find the derivative and simplify: f(x) = 3x−2x + 2x−π
Here is an SAT problem a student might see:
Three consecutive odd integers have a sum of 117 and an average of 39. What is the largest number?
Which question was harder? Well, it depends on where your strengths lie. If you are a good calculus student who has been paying attention in class, the first problem is actually pretty easy. The only catch is that you need to know how to find a derivative, which is a calculus tool. If you don’t know anything about calculus, it doesn’t matter how clever you are — you will miss the problem. The second question, meanwhile, presents a very different challenge. The only actual math skills required to solve it are division and a knowledge of what “integer” and “average” mean. Most middle schoolers have that knowledge, yet I’d venture to say that most middle schoolers would have zero chance of solving this problem.
The trick is that the second problem requires a very different set of skills — skills that aren’t exactly pure math skills. You must be able to figure out how to actually get the answer using these very basic math skills. Therein lies the challenge presented by test prep math: a student not only needs to have math skills, but he or she must be able to figure out how to get the answer using those skills. That is what makes hard problems hard in test prep math. The hardest problems on the SAT and ACT often test very basic concepts, but they do so in a very tricky way.
High school math teachers spend very little, if any, time doing this sort of thing with students. It simply isn’t needed for high school math, and their job is to teach students new concepts and help the students develop proficiency with those concepts. SAT and ACT tutors view content as only a necessary component that a student needs a certain amount of proficiency in, but it is only the start. The real improvements come from helping a student improve his or her ability to take a given set of information and figure out how it can be manipulated to get to the goal. It is much more like a riddle than calculus.
I spend a lot of time training tutors on how to best hone these skills in students. I consider it one of the core competencies our tutors must exhibit. This often involves asking the right questions in an effort to lead the student to the answer. Our entire curriculum is built around improving these skills in students. We address content deficiencies as needed, but we consider that just the beginning. While I love high school math teachers dearly, they have a very different job than I have. My job can’t replace theirs, and theirs can’t replace mine. When you consider how relatively little time a student actually ends up spending on SAT and ACT preparation, it makes sense to use the right tool for the job.

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