1. as you pointed out, the student-teacher ratio is 3 to 1, which isn’t terrible, but when I visited a center, I saw an early elementary student at the same table as a junior or senior. There is value to small group learning, but any teacher can tell you that there is no point in grouping kids 10 years apart together to learn. They have different attention spans, are in different developmental stages, and need different approaches.

2. The learning area ihas 5-7 U-shaped tables, which means that up to 21 kids ages 6-18 could be in there at a time. If your kid is struggling to pay attention in a classroom, why on earth would you think he or she’d be able to pay attention in a room full of kids like that?

3. The teachers are paid $10-$15 an hour. The local grocery store workers make the same amount, no college required. Teachers are desperate for a steady way to make extra money. . .and Sylvan takes advantage of that. As you pointed out, Sylvan makes $140-$160 per session, and only $15 of that goes to instruction–at BEST, that means 11% of what you’re paying goes towards the quality of teacher. As a parent, I’d be VERY suspicious of that percentage. As a teacher, I just couldn’t rationalize it.

4. They tell tutors that the advantage to that $15 an hour is that you don’t have to prep materials the way you do when you teach. This is technically true, but each mini-lesson worksheet has to be graded to see if students earned the 80% required to be proficient. Tutors are expected to do that DURING the session while juggling 3 kids. If you can’t, then you’re doing that after the session-unpaid. Apparently, with practice you could arrive 5 minutes before your sessions and leave 15 minutes after. That $15 an hour just dropped to $15 for 90 minutes–$10 per hour. Not worth it, and most teachers with experience will realize this. . .leaving Sylvan with a shallow pool of candidates from which to draw.

5. The entrance tests students take don’t aren’t appropriate for what they promise (at least not at this center). There is a HUGE difference between tests designed to assess your child’s grade level, and tests designed to assess whether your child is ON grade level. The first will give a report that says they do X skill at 5th grade level, and Y skill at 6th. The second will say they are on/below/above grade level, and that’s it. This center used the state’s 8th grade test. The problem with this is that the test is only designed to tell if a child has mastered 8th grade skills–not to tell what grade level they are ACTUALLY at.
The center insists that if the child misses questions X, Y, and Z, then they don’t understand this or that 6th grade skill, but that’s their interpretation of what that means (so, if they want it to say the kid is at 6th grade this time, and 7th next, they can), and not what the test is designed to assess. It’s a variation of the “garbage in, garbage out” concept–if the test isn’t designed to provide grade level information, then you’re not going to get valid information about the child’s grade level. The fact that they charge $250-$350 for this “service” is insane. Also, they do bubble tests in pencil, when there are GREAT diagnostic test resources out there online that ARE designed to tell you your child’s grade level in detail for $20 or so (there’s a good chance your school district already uses them).

6. By extension, this weird tests fuzzy thinking means that their “improve 1 grade level in 36 session” promise is bull because they use the same test to assess the grade level progress. If your child is taking an 8th grade test and they tell you that your child started at a 5th grade level, and has improved to a 6th grade level and the test isn’t designed to test for that, then it’s really their interpretation. . .not a valid scientific measure.

7. Workbooks? Are you kidding me? I walked into the center and saw shelf after shelf of workbooks. As a teacher, this makes me cringe because the kids who struggle in school often need creative and different methods of learning material. Manipulatives for math and English are HUGE for these learners–as we have known for decades. If your child is struggling to understand a geometric concept, for example, getting that shape into their hands where they can manipulate it is so much more effective than a picture on a page. Teachers love those things, and we wish we had the time/resources in class to use them more for instruction. When tutoring one-on-one we do. But at Sylvan, it’s just workbooks. . .much like those you can buy at your local teacher center. For this, they charge you $50 an hour? Insane.

8. It’s surprisingly low-tech. The “diagnostic” tests are in pencil. The students have binders where their progress is charted in writing only (so there’s minimal electronic tracking). The kids use workbooks. The only computers at the center were in administrative offices. I’m not saying that technology should be everything, but computerized testing has the advantage of being adaptive (like the GRE is), and thus more accurate. Further, some concepts are just easier to understand in animated activities (think physics, or biology). The most complicated technological device in the tutoring area was the copy machine, for photocopying page after page of tracking and worksheets.

My suggestion is to find a teacher looking for a tutoring job, and check their references. Go to http://www.letsgolearn.com, and pay $20 to take the same diagnostic test many schools give their students ($40 if you’re worried about math and English). Print out the diagnostic report, which will show you actual grade level, and take it to your kid’s tutor–explaining your concerns. Any teacher will know how to read the report, and will build their tutoring sessions around it. Repeat the test at the semester or end of year, and watch your child improve.

Total cost of 36 weeks 2x per week tutoring 3 kids to 1 tutor at Sylvan = $2,150
Total cost of 36 wks with your own test and 1 on 1 tutoring with a teacher ($30/hr) = $1,100

1. Sylvan as a business is very low profit. Over 50% of Sylvan franchise owners do not make profit.

First Sylvan teachers teach 3 students max. Average is 1 teacher for 2.5 students.

Hourly tuition rate is not $75. Average is about $45.

Teacher pay rate goes from $10-$18 / hour.

However, Sylvan directors and teachers on average spend 45 minutes to prepare for 1 hour lesson.

I can go on and on. So please stop thinking Sylvan business owners are ripping people off and making a killing. It is simply not true. If it is true, then there will be a lot of Sylvan like businesses. The fact is that there is few.

2. Sylvan educational quality
Everything in this world is relative. If you think Sylvan is bad, then who is better? I feel very confident that our Sylvan Learning Center offers the highest educational quality in the community.

However, we cannot pull magics.

We are the only one that guarantees students improve at least 1 grade grade level after 36 hours using CAT tests.

We are the only one that guarantees students improve SAT score by 200 points in our local community.

I feel confident that we are RELATIVELY better than the rest of tutoring places.