Private Tutoring Firms Helping Athletes

Pressure being placed upon American high school students to get better grades is forcing many high school athletes dreaming of collegiate glory to seek help with their homework from private tutoring organizations.

Firms that specialize in coaching students toward better grades and higher scores on college admissions tests say they are being deluged with calls from coaches. They report increases of up to 10% in the number of college-aspiring athletes seeking academic help.

“For the first time, they’re looking upon themselves as students,” said Stanley H. Kaplan, whose test-tutoring organization, the Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center, is one of the largest and oldest in the nation.

The boost in business by athletes is largely due to requirements recently set by the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.

Under those standards, graduating high school athletes must now earn a minimum score of about 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and maintain roughly a C average to be eligible for a college athletic scholarship.

Firms in states such as Georgia also are experiencing the effect of new “no-pass, no-play” standards. Georgia students now must pass five of six courses to remain eligible to participate in any extracurricular activity involving competition.

“We’ve got coaches, athletic directors and athletes all over” said C.M. Williams, owner of the Sylvan Learning Center in Lilburn. “Interest is backing down even to the middle school level.”

Costs range from $300 to $450 for up to 11 weeks of the special instruction offered during weekends or after school hours.

Most of the special schools’ directors, including Kaplan, noted that the nationally publicized trial of a lawsuit filed by a University of Georgia teacher has fueled new interest in academic achievement.

Jan Kemp was reinstated to her job as an English teacher and received $1.08 million after a federal jury in Atlanta found she had been unfairly fired for protesting academic favoritism shown to some athletes and well-connected students.