I began tutoring for A Road 2 Learning about a month ago, and it has been nothing but problems:
1. The company claims to offer paid training, but I still haven't been paid for the one training class they offered.
2. About training... The one class they hold is to teach you how to enter your tutoring hours into their payroll system. They don't teach you anything about how to tutor the kids! They basically just hand you some workbooks and tell you good luck. They do this even though a majority of the people they hire (myself included) don't have education degrees or classroom experience. The result is tutoring that is remarkably unstructured and, in my opinion, unhelpful to the students.
3. The company doesn't provide any support. Per their instructions, when I showed up at tutoring sites and a student was absent, I would try to call the parent to alert them to the absence. But (a) the phone numbers provided were often incorrect or incomplete, or (b) I would get a parent who only spoke Spanish on the phone. The company knew I didn't speak fluent Spanish when I was hired, and said any Spanish language calls would be made by someone in the main office. Good luck trying to get someone to make those calls for you.
4. The company wants to make the tutor into a salesperson. When the school district I worked in canceled on-campus tutoring during the AIMS tests, the company told me it was my responsibility to contact the parents and arrange off-campus tutoring for that week.in addition to running into the language problem again, there is the issue of what to tell the parents - if the school district thinks the tutoring should be suspended for that week, who am I to say otherwise?
5. And finally, the biggest issue: the company sees no problem with failing to pay tutors on time. The company pays via direct deposit every other week, but for the last several pay periods (at least) some of the hours billed have not been paid for. This is a wide-ranging problem that has affected many tutors, including myself. When asked about the missing money, the company comes up with various excuses - either that a payroll "glitch" was responsible, or that some tutors failed to enter their hours on time which resulted in an entire group being shortchanged, or that you, the individual tutor, must have failed to complete your paperwork. They also say the money will be there tomorrow... Wait, the next day... Definitely by next week... Basically like a person who's late with the rent trying to avoid being evicted.
Final comments: this group of people is unprofessional, shady, and to be avoided like the plague if you actually want to be paid for your work.
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