Tutoring is a $4 billion-a-year business in the United States and some of the hottest clients can barely brush their teeth: preschoolers.
In addition to carpooling tots to preschool and itty-bitty basketball, more and more parents are paying to have their 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds professionally prepped for kindergarten.
Palm Beach County parents from Jupiter to Boca Raton have embraced the trend.
In a strip mall, next to the Gold's Gym west of Boca Raton, the walkway swells with well-heeled moms in plastic chairs - waiting for a half-hour, sometimes more, while their children get what they hope is an educational edge at the Loggers' Run Kumon center, one of nine Kumon centers in the county.
Kumon, an international tutoring company founded in 1958 in Japan, has created Junior Kumon for the 2- to 6-year-old set. Enrollment in the program has grown nearly 27 percent since it opened in 2003, reaching 16,773 children by February.
One Boca girl, a fourth-grader at a nearby elementary school, recounts how she came to the Loggers' Run center in tears three years ago.
"I didn't know how to read," the girl said. "It was first grade and half the class did."
The girl's mom asked around, and brought her here. Now she's on the honor roll.
Alyssa Cabrera was determined to avoid that with her boys, so she signed up Vincent for Kumon when he was 4, after hearing about it from another mom. Now he's 6 and his 4-year-old brother Dominic is enrolled, too.
"I'm trying to make sure they have a head start," Cabrera said. "It boosts his confidence."
As Vincent and his tutor zip through flash cards and Dominic writes his numbers, their mother sits outside recounting compliments from teachers about how well Vincent does in school, how eager he is to help others who are behind and how high he's ranked in his class.
Beside her, Barbara Sacks nods in agreement. Her boys, Stone and Jett, both 3, are zipping through palm-sized, photocopied books such as The Big Hat. They're also counting and writing their numbers.
When they storm out from their lessons, they beam with smiles as they stow completed work.
Kumon students come to the center twice a week for a half-hour per subject. They take home work that parents must supervise daily for another 10 or 15 minutes. They have worksheets, flash cards and books. Sacks said her kids are eager to do the work and she fuels the enthusiasm with "positive reinforcement" such as trips for ice cream after lessons.
So many parents share Sacks' enthusiasm for pre-kindergarten tutoring that all of the big names in the tutoring business have jumped in.
Kaplan Inc.'s Score! recently updated its computer-based early reading curriculum to better serve children ages 4 to 7, who account for 15 percent to 20 percent of its 82,000 students. Sylvan Learning Centers introduced a new reading program this year that begins with children at age 4 1/2.
Companies say they're responding to parental demand. Parental fear also may play a role.
"There's a perception that's been put out into the marketplace by No Child Left Behind that schools aren't doing enough for kids," said Mark Jackson, a senior analyst for Eduventures, which tracks the education business.
At the same time, parents and tutors note that today's kindergarten is more like first grade - less about play and more about academics. And those parents are willing to fork out $40 an hour or more to give their children an edge.
Critics, most of them child psychologists, say parents are getting sucked into a rat race for 4-year-olds that won't necessarily make them better students when they're in third grade or better grown-ups down the line.
"There's no parent I know who doesn't want to give their child a leg up," said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, professor of academic psychology at Temple University and co-author of Einstein Never Used Flash Cards. But force-feeding information at an early age doesn't work. "We can't speed up development."
What about all those parents who say their kids are getting ahead? Hirsh-Pasek and her peers argue the gains become a wash in later years, when other kids from similar backgrounds pick up the same skills.
Michael Thompson, a psychologist and author of The Pressured Child, concurs.
"Early school performance is not predictive either of genius or later school performance," Thompson said.
He is most concerned about the subtle messages children get when parents shuttle them to tutors.
"You are in danger of making your child anxious about school," he said. "You shouldn't make everything so academic so soon."
Ava Sugar, owner of a Sylvan Learning Center in Palm Beach County, finds herself agreeing.
When her business was in Jupiter, she recalls hearing from more parents about tutoring their 3- and 4-year-olds. When one mom of a 3- year-old called about enrolling her boy, Sugar said, "I suggested he join gymnastics and be a little boy for a while."
Sugar said she raised her son well before the pressure kicked in.
"I know my son at the age of 4 didn't know the days of the week - couldn't care less. He didn't memorize his address in kindergarten - he was the only one who didn't. He just didn't care. And you know what? He's an aerospace engineer and trains the astronauts in Houston."
Executives at tutoring programs insist they aren't robbing kids of their childhood or forcing them to do something they don't want to.
All programs screen children. If they aren't ready to sit still for 10 or 15 minutes at a time or if they aren't interested in the subject, officials say they send the parents and children home and tell them to come back in a couple of months or a year.
"I think the child psychologists are well-intentioned and are speaking for a good number of children, but education is too complicated to be governed by black and white rules," said Richard Bavaria, vice president for Sylvan Learning Centers
Parents are often the best judges of what their children need, Bavaria said. And sometimes when a child is ready to read, mom or dad aren't comfortable teaching things such as phonics.
Not offering tutoring would be "doing a disservice to all those 4- and 5-year-olds who are ready and want to read," Bavaria said. "The pride children show us when they learn to read is something that parents tell us can move them. I've had more than one parent tell me they have to pull to the side of the road because they're so aghast that their child has read a billboard."
The National Association for the Education of Young Children stands in the middle of this debate.
"I would advise parents to be careful - not to be pro or against, but look at the developmental needs of their child," said Mark Ginsberg, executive director of the child advocacy organization. "It's very important that children love to learn, yet children need to learn lot of things, not only precursors to academic success."
He said some tutoring programs may be good for some children. The key is to know when a child is ready and to make sure the method of instruction is appropriate. Sometimes in the early years, he said, kids learn concepts better during play than under direct instruction.
"What worries us is the parent who doesn't have the means to pay a tutor and feel guilty not doing it," Ginsberg said. "Parents reading to children, listening to them, being good models, providing an enriching environment works.
"Putting your child in an advance tutorial isn't necessarily the best way to do it."
- sonja_isger@pbpost.com
