When Donna Halverson tried to help her 8-year-old son with his math homework, he often would burst into tears of frustration.
”I knew at the end of 2d grade that he needed help,” Halverson said.
”He had struggled the whole year, coming home with not very good grades. When I tried to help him–I have no teaching background whatsoever–he cried. I asked his teacher (to recommend a tutor), and she said I would have to look around myself.”
So when Halverson, who lives in Bartlett, saw a newspaper advertisement for the Sylvan Learning Center, she, like a growing number of parents in the Chicago area, enrolled him in the after-school remedial center.
Since February, for-profit tutoring centers like Sylvan, which are franchises of national companies, have seemed to pop up faster than McDonald`s and Burger King restaurants. About 40 centers have opened in the suburbs since last winter. As public and parochial schools grapple with tight budgets, large classroom sizes and set curriculums, the centers promise to give students individualized attention and raise basic skills by almost a grade level.
Because of the rapid growth, administrators of the learning centers say it is nearly impossible to estimate the number of children attending lessons, but some centers serve as many as 100 students.
Such help, however, does not come without a price. Parents pay up to $30 an hour–or more than $3,000 a year–to ensure that their youngsters have grasped basic math and reading skills.
While most educators say that it is too soon to tell what effect the centers may have on education, many agree that they provide a needed service. Most schools acknowledge that it is tough for them to meet the needs of all students and keep on hand lists of tutors to give children extra help. None of the tutors, however, provide the guarantees that the centers give in improving basic math and reading skills.
”I think it`s beneficial to some students, and possibly in some cases, very justified,” said Alvin Cohen, principal of Wilmot Junior High School in Deerfield. ”Anybody who can save a kid, get them back to school, get them motivated and a diploma, there has to be a place for in society.”
Tom Keim, regional director of Sylvan, said that the centers are not trying to compete with schools. ”We don`t ever want to give the impression that we`re taking the place of school,” he said. ”We have kids coming to us where there is such a competitive drive in the family that they are looking for an educational edge to put them in a big university. Another family may want to give a child more than they had or reach an unmotivated student.”
The three largest chains in the area are Sylvan, the Reading Game and the Huntington Learning Center. All three say they allow no more than three students to one teacher, compared with public and parochial schools where classes can be as large as 30 students–a fact that has helped most of the programs succeed, say most educators and staff members at the centers.
Though the centers do not have to be certified by the State of Illinois, most hire state-certified directors and part-time teachers who have usually worked in public or private schools. Each firm also provides training for their teachers and directors.
The Reading Game, started in California and recently acquired by Encyclopaedia Britannica of Chicago, has only corporate-owned centers, while Sylvan and Huntington offer franchises. Sylvan is based in Bellevue, Wash., and franchises can be bought from the corporation for $65,000 to $85,000. Keim said that by the end of 1987, corporate-owned and franchised centers will number 400 nationally. Huntington is based in Oradell, N.J., and has about 120 franchised and corporate-owned centers across the country. Buy-in fees and costs to open the franchises range from $60,000 to $90,000. None of the centers are in Chicago.
”I think the perception of public school is that `They can do it all. We pay our taxes, they can do it,` ” said Jill Donaldson Schmidt, regional manager of the Reading Game. ”But we don`t pay enough taxes. I feel public schools are doing a fantastic job, given their resources. There isn`t any magic we have here; we`ve just lowered the teacher-student ratio.”
The centers use the same approach, starting with extensive diagnostic tests, for one-time fees of up to $95, to determine gaps or weaknesses in students` basic skills. The tests then are used to help develop an
individualized program, which is administered through a variety of teaching aids ranging from computers to workbooks.
All of this is done in brightly decorated centers, located in storefront suites in suburban shopping centers. ”We used to locate in office
buildings,” Schmidt said. ”But parents were dropping off their children and couldn`t see where they were going. We`re here because parents can drive through, drop their children off and go grocery shopping. There`s name recognition, too. People pass by and they see we`re here.”
The majority of students at the centers are elementary and junior high school students and usually come twice a week for one-hour sessions. None have serious learning disabilities; most have fallen behind in one or more subjects. Others have exceeded their grade levels and are looking for a challenge or a head start to compete for admission to a quality university.
”We don`t tutor. That`s just a great Band-Aid, an immediate fix,” said Jay Wojcik, director of a Sylvan Learning Center in Glendale Heights. ”We give individual instruction based on student skill gaps. . . . There`s no stress and no pressure.”
Parents say they do not mind paying the hourly fee or chauffeuring their children back and forth from the centers. And students say they do not mind the instruction because it makes life easier in school.
Martin Peters, 13, of River Grove said he liked attending lessons at the Reading Game.
”It`s great. I gained two years of reading in two months. And it helps a lot in school,” the 8th grader said.
Third grader David Boffro said he had problems in reading before going to the River Grove center. ”I kept making mistakes,” the shy 8-year-old said. He said he enjoyed attending the lessons. ”I like doing the stuff,” he said about his program.
Speaking from his car phone while waiting for his two children to complete their lessons in River Grove, Chicagoan Michael Farrell said that for his 7-year-old son, Joe, the lessons were a necessity; for his 9-year-old daughter, Becky, they are a luxury. Joe was more than a half-year behind in his reading skill, while Becky ”went right off the top of the test.”
”If the kids need the help, they need the help,” Farrell said. ”It just so happens in my case, it (the cost) is not a problem. My wife and I both work and it is not a hardship on us. I think we got more than our money`s worth if you think about how important it is to learn how to read well. How can you put a price on that?”
Farrell said his son has been enrolled in the program for almost nine months. First diagnosed as reading on a beginning 1st-grade level when he was about to be promoted to 2d grade, Joe now reads on a 3d-grade level. He attends the center once a week now for ”maintenance.” Farrell credits the center for preventing his son from having a history of academic problems.
”I think my son would have been the typical kind to just fall through the cracks,” Farrell said. ”He never seemed to be up to par on reading, and I didn`t know what to do about that. I felt if he slipped in reading, he`ll slip at everything else. But the most important change is he likes to read now. He reads to himself before he goes to bed.”
Halverson said that she and her son, Daniel, no longer fight over his homework, and he is bringing home much higher grades in math.
”He thinks he can do it now,” Halverson said. ”At the beginning of school he had to write a paper about himself. He put math down as his favorite subject. Six months ago, he would have never put math.”
But what happens to youngsters whose parents cannot afford the centers?
Administrators at the centers say they know those who most need their services often cannot afford the hourly fee. None of the centers have scholarship programs or installment payment plans.
”There are a lot of people who can`t afford it, and we regret that we can`t reach them because of that,” said Schmidt, regional manager of the Reading Game. The Encyclopaedia Britannica may devise some way to help parents who cannot pay the price, she said.
Most of the centers are eager to establish city facilities, but they are blocked, say administrators, by prohibitive rents and whether enough parents can afford the lessons to make the centers profitable. Until then, though, some educators say the centers may serve to widen the academic performance gap between suburban and inner-city students.
”Most of the problems are in big, urban cities,” Cohen, the Wilmot Junior High principal, said. ”Parents can`t afford to send their kids to places like that. Those kids will be even further behind the lowest kids here because parents here can afford it.”
