Tutors

Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. Explaining the quadratic formula, generating twenty more practice problems, and marking up a five-paragraph essay are the bulk of a tutoring hour and an LLM does all three on demand, which caps this at 7; the residue that holds — sitting across from a 14-year-old who says 'I get it' when he doesn't, and pacing a session against a Thursday test — keeps it out of the 0-6 band.

Some physical or field component. Most sessions run at a kitchen table, a library branch, or a learning-center cubicle, with driving between clients, printed worksheets, and manipulatives for younger students — but nothing physical is being done to anything, and the same session already runs over Zoom without loss, which puts it at 8 rather than up with in-home caregivers.

No licence, no signature requirement. No state licence, no exam, no continuing-education hours: an agency can hire a strong undergrad on a background check alone and Wyzant will list anyone who passes a subject quiz, so the 1 reflects that nothing legally stops a parent from replacing you with software or a cheaper tutor tomorrow.

The human relationship is the product. Parents keep paying $60-90 an hour after the concept is explained because the specific person their kid will actually sit still for is the product — referrals move nearly all private business, and losing a tutor mid-semester means restarting the relationship, not just the curriculum, which earns 14; it stops short of 17+ because families do swap tutors between subjects and school years.

Meaningful discretion. You decide whether to reteach fractions before tackling algebra, when to tell a parent their child is behind, and how to handle a student who's clearly copying answers — real calls made alone in the room — but they're bounded by the school's syllabus and the test date, and you don't diagnose, place, or write anything that follows the child on record, so 7 sits at the floor of genuine discretion.