The costs that are not money

Coaching typically adds fifteen to twenty-five hours a week on top of school, for two years, at fifteen. That comes out of sleep, out of anything the student was doing outside academics, and often out of the school work the coaching is supposed to support. Those are real costs even when the coaching is good.

This is not an argument against it — a great many people are served well by it. It is an argument for deciding deliberately rather than by default, and for reviewing it honestly at three months. If the marks have not moved and the student is exhausted, that is information, and continuing because the fee is already paid is the sunk cost we teach families to watch for everywhere else.