‘Free’ tutoring is big business for Sylvan

The No Child Left Behind act is a bonanza for private tutoring firms, including Sylvan Learning.

Under the act’s provisions, students enrolled in schools judged to be failing are entitled to free tutoring, paid for by taxpayers. The costs total $2.5 billion annually, according to U.S. News and World Report.
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Tutoring companies contract with individual states and school districts. Sylvan provides such tutoring at about half of its 1,200 U.S. locations, according to Tabatha Sweeney-Gehrt, Sylvan’s director of new business development. At some centers, she says, business has doubled because of the service.

Earlier this year at a Sylvan location in West Hartford, Conn., the number of tutored students more than tripled, according to Kathleen Keenan, the center’s director at the time. She estimates 250 kids came to the center specifically for the free tutoring. Keenan is now director of education at a Sylvan center in East Longmeadow, Mass.

In 1993, two Baltimore businessmen, Christopher Hoehn-Saric and Douglas Becker, gained ownership of Sylvan and first took the company public.

A decade later, Sylvan sold its tutoring business to New York-based, private equity firm Apollo Advisors, founded by Leon Black. At that point, Sylvan became part of Educate, Inc., an Apollo-owned company that went public in 2004. Educate’s holdings include the Hooked on Phonics grammar/language training system.

In a $535 million deal completed in June, Hoehn-Saric and Becker, working with Citigroup Capital Partners and Sterling Capital Partners, took Educate private. The holding company that now owns Educate is Edge Acquisition, LLC.

Hoehn-Saric is still CEO of Educate (and senior managing director at Sterling Capital), while Becker is CEO of Laureate Education, another large, privately held firm. Both companies are based in Baltimore.

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