Sylvan Learning Center
is a company that offers extra help to students who are behind their classmates. Students between pre-kindergarten and twelfth grade can use the center and tutors. While this program promises to help students, there are several problems with how the program is implemented.
Lesson Structure
Sylvan Learning Center bases their tutoring program on teaching students the skills needed for a given subject or general homework help. The center does not offer help on individual assignments or preparation for an upcoming exam. On the official Sylvan website, the company's homework helping plan for high school students includes assessments to determine if a student needs better organizational skills or extra instruction on class material. Rather than focusing on assignments given in school, this program is based on issuing assessments and completing worksheets and workbooks.
Cost
While private tutors can range from 10 to 30 dollars an hour and most schools offer free tutoring centers on campus, Sylvan Learning Center charges between 40 and 70 dollars an hour, and requires a time commitment of at least three hours per week for a set amount of weeks. After an assessment, one Sylvan visitor on the Consumer Affairs website was quoted a price of nearly $2000 per month for tutoring. The cost of tutoring at Sylvan Learning can be more than many families can afford.
Time Frame
Combined with cost, the time commitment required of students at Sylvan is a source of complaints from customers. Based on a learning assessment, Sylvan creates a plan for students that requires a certain amount of time at the center per week. Three hours per week is the minimum, though some customers reported being asked to send their child for up to 12 hours each week. During the school year, this added time in tutoring can conflict with the student's other activities, as well as additional study and homework time needed for other subjects.
Tutors
Sylvan Learning Centers are not based on a one tutor to one student ratio. Often times, tutors will work with three to four students during an hour. The problem that Sylvan customers have with this fragmented attention is that those students are all with the tutor for different reasons. According to Consumer Affairs, students in a group can range from pre-kindergarten to sixth graders, all in the same group. The learning habits and needs of a small child is different than that of a Junior High Student. Also, parents are paying for one hour of lessons per session, while students will receive a quarter of that time with their tutor.
Learning Disabilities
Like any tutoring program, Sylvan Learning Center is only as effective as the student who is there to learn. Students with diagnosed learning disabilities are not given specialized attention, but are instead given more hours of instruction. An employee and client of Sylvan Learning Center posted on Ripoff Report "Sylvan works best for students who have no learning disabilities, who were maybe just lazy during school, need extra attention, or perhaps they were young for their grade level and needed extra time." Students with needs beyond these cannot be effectively tutored in learning environment created by Sylvan Learning Center.
Tags: Sylvan Learning, Learning Center, Sylvan Learning Center, assessment Sylvan, Consumer Affairs