Sylvan Learning review: Beware and stay away 11

I have had a much different experience with Sylvan. All three of my kids have attended lessons at Sylvan. My son was struggling with Algebra in 8th grade and the staff really helped him get back on track. I thought about dropping him to a lower level course before calling Sylvan, the Director/Owner walked me through all the different scenarios. They knew his teacher in school and explained to me that it wasn't always going to be easy for my student, the students in the teachers class are held to a higher standard, but they traditionally do very well in Geometry, Algebra 2 trig and even Calc because of the foundation she gives them.

I laughed when he mentioned Calc, but my son is a junior Engineering major at UCONN taking Calc 2.

My other two kids attended study skills programs, and are doing well.

I know Sylvan is a franchise operation, so there may be some bad operators out there. The owner of our center was in the center everyday, when he wasn't meeting with parents he was working with the kids. He had a great relationship with the local schools and many of the other parents were educators themselves. Our superintendednt even had his daughter enrolled.

I recommend the Sylvan we used to all my friends, if you are thinking about Sylvan and don't know anyone who has used the one in your area, ask for references.

I think it is unrealistic to expect grades to improve after just two weeks.

I used to be a Director of Education for Sylvan (prior to that I was a high school English and History teacher for 5 years-I have 3 degrees including a masters in curriculum development). First of all, it doesn't matter which one you go to EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM IS THE SAME. The math and Reading programs are sent from corporate to every Sylvan, and as the Director you cannot change the program in anyway, or else they cannot offer the one grade level improvement guarantee. They claim to tailor the program to your child, but they can't. They can omit certain skills that your child may not need to learn, but other than that, every child will learn the same things with the same books at the same time. Furthermore, Sylvan's testing is a complete joke. They expose your child to a complicated test in a format that your child is not familiar with. After your 36 hours, they then give your child the same test, however now they have had 36 hours of worksheets showing them how to answer these test questions, and have of course, seen the test before and are more comfortable with it. There is no correlation whatsoever between the reading program and school.

As a Director, you are sent on a week long training program in Baltimore where they teach you how to use wiggle language to avoid questions and to sell their system. As a high school teacher, there is no benefit from the reading program that couldn't be gained from reading with your child every night and checking their homework. It would be more helpful to speak to their teacher and set up daily sign-offs on homework through an agenda, then having your child sit for 3 hours a week doing multiple choice activities out of workbooks. Directors are even taught to downplay the effectiveness of private tutors (the main competition that sylvan has) because "although they may help your child do better in school initially, there will be no long term results". This is also untrue. The benefit of a tutor is that they actually work with your child on the activities that your child is doing in SCHOOL, and when they have questions, the tutor can help them to understand. Sylvan wants you to believe that you need their program in order to catch your child up and help them get ahead-In my 3 years with Sylvan, I never saw a single child get to the point where they were ahead. Furthermore, students who had been with Sylvan for a long time, were often still failing their classes (especially English) because the material is so irrelevant to the classroom.

In training we were also taught how to roll students from one program into another and how to keep them paying Sylvan. The programs are set up so that your child will score very low on a test (to create a sense of "urgency") that is ambiguous and doesn't truly reflect school grade (its true-they are "Sylvan Grades"), and then a set amount of hours are required for them to move toward their "grade level", however by the time this is reached, the child is already at the next year and school and will have to be tested all over again. It is a complete sham. I wish more people would explain how crooked this system is, but Directors are afraid because we are forced to sign a waiver stating that we will not tell anyone how the Sylvan system works. I beg you to save your money-get a private tutor, or work out a solution with your child's teacher, but don't throw your money down the corporate Sylvan tube.

I am a Sylvan franchise owner in Mountain View CA. I would like to comment on Tannis' feedback here.
Please excuse me for English grammar error here because English is my second language.

Tannis:
I used to be a Director of Education for Sylvan (prior to that I was a high school English and History teacher for 5 years-I have 3 degrees including a masters in curriculum development). First of all, it doesn't matter which one you go to EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM IS THE SAME. The math and Reading programs are sent from corporate to every Sylvan, and as the Director you cannot change the program in anyway, or else they cannot offer the one grade level improvement guarantee. They claim to tailor the program to your child, but they can't. They can omit certain skills that your child may not need to learn, but other than that, every child will learn the same things with the same books at the same time.

My response:
Tannis, I am not sure if you really worked for Sylvan or not. What you are describing here is completely wrong.
You can change programs. We do it for every single student here. Sylvan corporate just provide the tools. It is up to Director of Education to change them. First, you need to identify students' weaknesses and what they have learned. Sylvan uses California Achievement Test as the main tool. Then we omit these skills that students have learned. Finally, we customize the program. For math, we can add homework, "+, - X, /" tables, fraction, percentage and decimal conversation...For reading, focus on vocabulary for writing, give vocabulary homework...There are some many ways to customize Sylvan programs. It is a shame that you never really learned or you never worked for us.

Your statement - "every child will learn the same things with the same books at the same time" is a complete lie. We have about 140 students at Mountain View. Not even one student is learning the same thing at the same time with another student. I challenge you provide any concrete evidence.

Tannis:
Furthermore, Sylvan's testing is a complete joke. They expose your child to a complicated test in a format that your child is not familiar with. After your 36 hours, they then give your child the same test, however now they have had 36 hours of worksheets showing them how to answer these test questions, and have of course, seen the test before and are more comfortable with it. There is no correlation whatsoever between the reading program and school.

My response:
Tannis, I am certain that you are paid by someone to write the complaint. We always test students with different test. There are 2 tests for each grade level from California Achievement Test, Form A & Form. Form A is the one that we typically give students when they enroll. Form B is the one that we test for progress. Sylvan did not design the tests, we are using 3rd party tests. If this is not fair, then what is fair?

It is a shame on you making the false statement again.

Tannis:
As a Director, you are sent on a week long training program in Baltimore where they teach you how to use wiggle language to avoid questions and to sell their system. As a high school teacher, there is no benefit from the reading program that couldn't be gained from reading with your child every night and checking their homework. It would be more helpful to speak to their teacher and set up daily sign-offs on homework through an agenda, then having your child sit for 3 hours a week doing multiple choice activities out of workbooks. Directors are even taught to downplay the effectiveness of private tutors (the main competition that sylvan has) because "although they may help your child do better in school initially, there will be no long term results". This is also untrue. The benefit of a tutor is that they actually work with your child on the activities that your child is doing in SCHOOL, and when they have questions, the tutor can help them to understand. Sylvan wants you to believe that you need their program in order to catch your child up and help them get ahead-In my 3 years with Sylvan, I never saw a single child get to the point where they were ahead. Furthermore, students who had been with Sylvan for a long time, were often still failing their classes (especially English) because the material is so irrelevant to the classroom.

In training we were also taught how to roll students from one program into another and how to keep them paying Sylvan. The programs are set up so that your child will score very low on a test (to create a sense of "urgency") that is ambiguous and doesn't truly reflect school grade (its true-they are "Sylvan Grades"), and then a set amount of hours are required for them to move toward their "grade level", however by the time this is reached, the child is already at the next year and school and will have to be tested all over again. It is a complete sham. I wish more people would explain how crooked this system is, but Directors are afraid because we are forced to sign a waiver stating that we will not tell anyone how the Sylvan system works. I beg you to save your money-get a private tutor, or work out a solution with your child's teacher, but don't throw your money down the corporate Sylvan tube.

My response:
I do not want to waste more time to respond to you. You have no clue how Sylvan system works and making false statements.

We have helped thousands of students here at our center. Most of them are very happy.

If we have been cheating parents and students for the past 30 years, Sylvan will be long gone.

Yes, Will you did the right thing. I am Paek Young-Oh and a Korean American Father. I sent my son over to sylvan, and wasted my money. This place ripped me off and my son didn't learn a thing. Now because you've quit don't start signing up for similar learning places like Kumon. They are more expensive and there is no instruction. Please read my comment!

I agree with you. Kumon learning centers is a bigger scam. I also found that Kumon Math & Reading has no instruction, because most of their tutors are Japanese or Chinese first generation stay-home moms who are mostly uneducated or cannot speak English or know Mathematics. All Kumon learning center tutors do is distribute worksheets and charge money. Most of the students are Japanese, Chinese and Indian immigrants. I also heard that many children were molested at Kumon Math & reading. I agree with you that Kumon learning centers is a scam. All learning centers are scams.

Children's education horror story. Looking back, I feel stupid ever enrolling my children at Kumon. Every time I picked up my girls at the centre, the owner Nicole Smith was away from the classroom yapping away on her cell phone. She had little to no patience with the kids, raised her voice at kids who approach her with questions. The problem is that there's only one teacher and a bunch of high school kids working as staff. Other parents observed exactly the same thing. There were other things, like staff being generally impatient with the little ones and even comparing siblings out loud (my two girls). Whenever I tried to address any issues with the owner, Nicole Smith, she was absolutely defensive, insinuated that she had been doing this for so long she didn't need pointers. I took out my daughters from the centre. This was absolutely an abysmal experience. Nicole Smith apparently thinks that parents don't get a say in their children's education - because she's "the expert". Parents, let me be absolutely clear: if you have issues with your tutor, you should be able to bring it up in a reasonable tone and have a mature discussion about it. Anything less than that is absolutely unacceptable- and that's not even touching on the fact that Nicole Smith pretends there's no problem with her or her staff or her dingy centre. Don't be fooled by looks of the front. There are way too many issues Kumon Math & Reading centre of Hamilton West End and Nicole Smith has demonstrated she's not interested in fixing them.

My 10th gr went from public to private school this year. Private schools are not great for kids with disabilities! By the 2nd marking period he was failing and then he missed 3 wks for surgery. I contacted our Sylvan Ctr in Kalamazoo, MI, and my son received an evaluation and I purchased 100 hours. Immediately my son began learning better from one tutor/teacher so I made EVERY EFFORT to make sure he met with this teacher. We moved our schedules and worked w/ school so he could leave early 3 days/wk as well as ALL testing/quizzes/homework would be completed at Sylvan. Soon, they discovered he required extra testing time as well as a reading comprehension issue. Sylvan rearranged his sessions and put in testing skills when they could. His grade has improved greatly.

Many years ago enrolled my daughter to help bring her up in math especially as she was struggling in school. They started out by testing her to determine where she needed help so they could concentrate on those areas. In practice, this was bogus. They never used the testing at all. All they did was help her with her homework which I could do myself. She shared a tutor session with 3 other kids. No one on one help. No attention or concentration on her weak areas. After several weeks, i realized this was a sham program unless you as a parent could not or did not have the time to help your child with their homework. The concept of bringing them to grade level and concentrating on their weaknesses was bogus. I demanded a termination to the agreement which they gave us and demanded a refund of the worthless testing fee which they refused. Understand that this company is a money mill to use a small number of moonlighting school teachers to help a large number of struggling kids with their homework and nothing more. my daughter did fine after help from a one on one tutor for less money than Sylvan charged. If your child needs help, I would look elsewhere.

Sylvan is a joke. The ACT PREP is giving the kid a workbook that they do on their own, checking th3 answer on their own. No instruction. 55$/hou4 a workbook

We tried out Sylvan and we have mixed feelings about it. The kids enjoyed it until the tutor our kid's personality clashed. It seemed that learning center was a bit too costly for the kids and they also struggled more than learned so we had to opt for other options. Beestar.org was really helpful and useful. Beestar is completely online and the kids loved it. It's also a lot more cost-efficient and the kids still learned a lot of skills.