I made $1,000 an hour as an SAT tutor. My students did better without me.

Melissa is a 17-year-old high school junior. She's bright, hard-working, and ambitious. Her parents, both extremely successful entrepreneurs, have enlisted me to help Melissa raise her SAT scores. Their only goal is to get her into her dream school: the University of Southern California. The problem, they say, is that Melissa is "a bad tester" — she might have a 4.0 GPA and a slew of extracurricular achievements, but when it comes to standardized tests, she's helpless.

The real problem: The whole idea of a "bad tester" is bullshit, but almost every parent I've encountered believes it.

I've spent a decade tutoring the SAT. In that time, I've developed a reputation for efficacy. My students routinely improve their scores by more than 400 points, and wealthy parents desperate for a solution to their test prep woes have no problem paying me what most would consider outrageous rates: up to $1,000 an hour. I work from home, I make my own hours, and I have a job that a friend of mine describes as "cushy beyond belief."

Commanding these rates for a profession as simple as tutoring should have been a dream come true. Yet as I accumulated experience working with hundreds of students around the country, the situation soured. I realized that as a nation, we've created a monster: a generation of disempowered, directionless, and overburdened students who work harder every year, yet continue to see their SAT scores decline. And I was becoming a key part of the problem.

The myth of the "bad tester"

Nearly every student who came my way was, apparently, a "bad tester."

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What do most parents mean when they refer to their children as bad testers?

Bad tester (n.): A student capable of keeping a 3.9 GPA at a competitive high school while participating in four extracurricular pursuits who is nonetheless incapable of learning the small set of math facts, grammar rules, and strategies necessary to get a high SAT score.

How is it possible that a student who can ace his trigonometry tests and get an A+ in English can't apply those same skills to the SAT? On the surface, it seems unlikely. But as I learned, parents and students around the country have been conned into thinking that it's not only possible but standard.

The first thing you need to know in order to understand the illegitimacy of this entire concept: The SAT isn't particularly difficult.

What do you need for a perfect SAT score? A thorough knowledge of around 110 math rules and 60 grammar rules, familiarity with the test's format, and the consistent application of about 40 strategies that make each problem a bit easier to solve. If you can string together a coherent essay, that's a plus.

Before you accuse me of being pompous, a quick bit of backstory:

I got a 40th percentile PSAT score. I don't have the "innate" ability to get high test scores, and few others do.

As a result of my low PSAT scores, I spent months studying for the SAT like a man possessed (with more than a bit of encouragement from my mother). When I took the actual SAT, I got a 99th percentile score.

So did I become a "good tester"? Did I magically activate my innate inability to perform well on standardized tests by getting struck by lightning? Or did I just learn what I needed to learn by studying the relevant material over a long period of time? The answer, I hope, is obvious.

The entire notion of the "bad tester" is ridiculous. So is the notion of a "good tester." Good testers are kids who study the relevant material until they know it by heart. Bad testers are the kids who don't. Kids who can walk into the SAT and get high scores on their first attempt are just the rare few who already have most of the requisite knowledge at their disposal.

So why the hell do we use this as an excuse?

Why we think "bad testers" are real

Our culture demands immediate, effortless gains. We want seven-minute abs, 10 Minute Managers, and overnight real estate millions. Here's an actual conversation I had with a friend of mine:

Friend: Man, I'm so bad at golf.

Me: What do you mean?

Friend: Every time I play, I stink. I can't drive the ball straight, I'm horrible at putting, and don't even get me started on my fairway game.

Me: How often do you play?

Friend: I dunno — maybe once a year?

Here's the issue: My friend isn't a bad golfer. My friend doesn't play golf.

There's a big difference between being bad at something and not practicing it. I would never say that I'm "bad at German" or that I'm "horrible at putting together Rubik's cubes." I've never tried to do either. I simply don't speak German, and have never learned how to spin the blocks in the right direction in the right sequence.

I believe our nation's inability to grasp this difference is directly responsible for our plummeting SAT scores. Many of the parents I worked with expected their children to ace the SAT without instruction, effort, or practice. I was seen as a last resort — a necessary curative to their children's lack of innate testing ability.

There's a disconnect here. The parents I worked with were smart, and they cared about their kids' success to a degree that you might not believe. So how could a logical, intelligent person be led to such an erroneous belief?

Standardized testing voodoo

In my experience, people see the SAT and ACT as "magical." In most people's eyes, they're not just tests of material; they're weird, they're tricky, and they're impossible to beat. There's a certain je ne sais quoi to these exams that separates them from the otherwise manageable academic tasks facing the American high school population.

Ask the average high school girl to use the Pythagorean theorem, to summarize the main idea of a paragraph, or to correct the comma usage in an English sentence, and she'll have no problem. And if she can do these things, she's already on her way toward a perfect SAT score. Yet if you ask the same girl what she thinks about the SAT, she'll have a panic attack.

We've taught students that they can't study for the test— and if they do, they do so in the most cursory, ineffective manner possibleWhy? Why are otherwise capable students so petrified of a test that, upon inspection, is relatively straightforward, predictable, and manageable?

American academic culture has taught students that the SAT is a reflection of their own innate abilities, despite all evidence to the contrary. They're given unrealistic expectations about its difficulty, about the steps necessary to master it, and about the timelines they'll need in which to do so. And they're given the stark impression that any efforts they take to understand it are futile and misguided.

Because we've taught them that they can't study for the test, they don't — and if they do, they do so in the most cursory, ineffective manner possible. When they take the SAT, they get the poor scores reflective of non-study and inattention, yet they feel that their results are a reflection of their own inherent inability to take the exam in the first place, reinforcing the initial fear and inertia that prevents them and their peers from studying for the next round. And around and around we go.

The SAT isn't easy, but it's extremely doable. The only problem: You'll never be able to do well if you don't think you can in the first place.

Just pay attention, young man!

The College Board repeatedly promotes its exam as a simple reflection of standard American high school curriculum; if you take tough courses and excel in school, you'll do well on the SAT. Because my experience hasn't reflected this notion, I advise most families to begin prepping during their freshman or sophomore year instead.

Starting early gives students more time to prepare. It allows them to study slowly and consistently, the way the human brain learns best. And it allows them to rip away their false notions of impossibility surrounding the SAT.

The students who tackle the SAT earlier on are more confident, more capable, and far less stressed. Yet the vast majority of parents and students wait until their junior (or, god forbid, senior) year to prepare, mostly because they believe the false idea that it's better to wait than it is to start studying.

Where else in the world do we recommend delaying a course of study in order to become better at anything? We're training our students to be as helpless as possible. Why would we do that?

It's not us, it's you

The College Board strives to be seen as a meaningful indicator of student readiness and academic achievement, and its messaging to parents, students, and schools echoes this sentiment ad nauseam. The backs of its own SAT prep books are plastered with language reflecting this idea (even as the board encourages you to purchase its books and get additional prep on top of your schoolwork).

However, in my experience, a student's grades in school have very little to do with his SAT performance. In fact, the majority of my SAT students had little if any trouble with their schoolwork; these were smart kids with good grades. They were mastering their coursework — supposedly the only thing necessary to getting high SAT scores — yet their SAT scores were in the 40th percentile. I found this interesting, to say the least.

Few understand that the SAT requires specific, school-independent training. Instead, they assume that if their children do well in school and poorly on the SAT, they are bad testers. And that's where I come in.

Hiring my score

Most of the students I worked with were delightful. Some were not. Those who weren't all had one thing in common: a complete, ingrained, and thoroughly taught lack of personal responsibility. In these cases, the attitude of both the parents and the students was clear: "I wrote you a check, which means that the scores should start improving on their own."

"Michael hasn't been doing any of his homework," one parent once wrote me, "so what am I paying you for?"

Michael wasn't doing his work, and I was being blamed.

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When I told the parent in question that it was Michael's responsibility to do his work, and that I couldn't monitor his day-to-day schedule, she requested a refund.

When you buy a Bowflex machine, it's not the machine itself that gets you in shape — it's the use of that machine. But as many dusty Bowflex machines will attest, not everyone shares this attitude.

My job as a teacher was to show my students the path — but it was their job to walk it. I could clear up difficult challenges and prescribe the best possible coursework for the days ahead, but my students were the ones who had to do the work. If they didn't, the results they'd get from my teaching were marginal at best.

Yet in many cases, my clients assumed that the sessions with me, rather than the work done as a result of those sessions, was the antidote to misunderstanding. But without the challenging, time-consuming, and often frustrating ritual of internalized, independent study, true understanding is almost never possible.

At a certain point, I realized that my tutoring was becoming as much an excuse as it was an enabling mechanism. By acting as the standalone expert on the SAT and ACT, I was preventing my students from thriving nearly as much as I was allowing them to excel.

By relying on an instructor, a classroom, or a series of online videos, instead of on focused, weakness-targeted labor, students are hamstringing themselves and their own ability to learn.

And I, as a one-on-one tutor, was part of the problem: a culture of experts-as-roadblocks baked into the fiber of our educational culture.

The solution to this problem was so glaringly obvious, yet so widely disregarded, that I've devoted the past year of my life to promoting it.

The wake-up call

In late 2012, the demand for my services outweighed my ability to deliver them. Even as my rate skyrocketed to $650 an hour, I was turning down potential clients left and right. I couldn't tutor more than eight to 10 students in a given quarter, and as many families were knocking on my door each month.

It was frustrating to turn down both the students and the potential revenue. To keep everyone happy, I came up with a solution: If I couldn't work with someone personally, I'd simply give him or her access to my Dropbox folder full of lesson plans and strategies — free in the case of friends and family, and a few hundred dollars for those I didn't know.

Over the years, I'd been documenting the specific strategies, tactics, and drill sequences that I knew worked. While I was and still am constantly making tweaks to my methods, there were certain "set in stone" methodologies that worked on all of my students. To save time, I'd document them and provide them to my students upfront, rather than delivering these lessons during paid hours.

Most potential clients were less than thrilled by the consolation prize. They wanted me, the "expert," to tutor their children — not just a folder full of readings. There was something wrong with their kids, and only the guru could fix it.

However, a small percentage of the families actually did read through the lesson plans and strategies and followed them to the letter. And something funny happened: I started getting letters telling me their kids were doing better than my one-on-one students — much better, in many cases.

At first, this didn't make any sense. How could a simple folder full of assignments and readings be outperforming me? Wasn't I, as a one-on-one teacher, supposed to be more effective than a folder of assignments I'd created? My rate suggested as much, but the results were saying otherwise.

When you removed me from the equation, the lesson plans and strategies stood on their ownAs the testimonials for my Dropbox folder kept pouring in, I started to suspect that my own involvement in my students' process might have been hampering, rather than improving, their performance. The results I was getting were impressive not because I sat with the kids, and not because of my magical teaching abilities, but simply because I'd figured out a rigorous and tested study plan, and I was forcing my kids to work through at least a portion of it.

When you removed me from the equation, the lesson plans and strategies stood on their own. There were no missed sessions, no forgotten assignments, and no excuses. You either did the work or you didn't — and the kids who did do the work got the predictably good results that any devoted, consistent course of self-study would provide.

I decided to turn the folder into a proper online program. I hired a programmer and some graphic designers online, worked through months of glitches and nightmares I wasn't prepared to handle, and launched it to the public in January of 2013. It was and still is incredibly bare-bones, but with an improved interface, some slight modifications, and the complete lack of my interference in the process, the students using the program have continued to excel.

For nearly two years, I hung on to my one-on-one practice even as the online program continued to thrive and evolve. As word of the program's results spread, so did new opportunities for exposure and word of mouth, and my one-on-one practice thrived along with the program. I raised my rate to $1,000 an hour, partially in an attempt to create an obvious apples-to-oranges comparison, yet despite the fact that my own published results were practically identical to those of my program, customers kept knocking on my door.

In early 2015, I made the decision to stop providing the one-on-one option altogether. Giving up the $1,000-an-hour tutoring gig was difficult (perhaps the understatement of the century), but after spending another 18 months watching my simplified curriculum outperform my own hands-on instruction, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was doing as much harm as good.

I'd personally witnessed a patched-together computer program routinely outperform "the SAT tutor to the 1%," and I've spent the past year obsessing over ways to get it into more students' hands.

The punchline

American students have become far too reliant on everyone and everything but themselves. When our children don't excel, we sign them up for classes, hire tutors, and, if all that fails, administer them amphetamines like M&Ms. Plummeting SAT scores stand as a blaring testament to the fact that this approach isn't working.

Kids are remarkable learners. If we give them the tools they need to study, the belief that they can learn on their own, and the gentle support necessary to encourage the process, they'll accomplish remarkable things.

On the other hand, if we put the power of education in the hands of figureheads, externalized structures, and programs that dictate what students are supposed to learn, when, where, and how, American students will continue to flounder.

I've seen what students can do and learn on their own, and I've seen how students act when someone else is given the reins. I prefer the former.

Anthony-James Green is the founder and CEO of Green Test Prep, an online SAT and ACT practice program. He has more than 14,000 hours of experience training students to master these exams, and was recently called "America's top SAT tutor" by Business Insider.

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