Kumon Learning Centers - A Review

Both of my boys are adopted from the foster care system here in Colorado. They are wonderful boys and I love them dearly. They moved into our home at the ages of six and seven.

My seven-year-old, we'll call him James for the sake of his privacy, wasn't able to read. He was limited to words like "and", "the", and "is". He went from a sub-par school district to an excellent one and was behind the minute he started. He struggled with his self-esteem and was often frustrated.

By the end of second grade, my husband and I knew we had to do something. We decided to enroll him into the Kumon program. Our expectations were high after talking to the owner of the center near our home. She promised he'd be up to grade level in six months.

Nine months later, we really hadn't seen any progress. His reading was better, but progressing at the same rate as his peers, which meant he was still about a grade and a half behind.

I'll give you a little insight to why I think this might be. Kumon's program sends a child home with daily workbooks to complete with visits to their center twice a week. James would bring home these workbooks and fly through them as fast as he could, even if that meant skipping words or just answering the questions without reading at all. This meant I had to sit with him while he did his workbooks in order to make sure he did them correctly.

While at the center, I suspect James would do much the same as he tried to do at home, except in the center, there are on average about three tutors (mostly high school students) to around twenty students so he would get away with cheating much easier than he did at home. The tutors jobs were simply to mark the incorrect answers in the workbook and send the student back to make corrections.

To top it off, the people weren't very friendly, the waiting room for parents was too small, I was expected to do the grading for the homework without a key, and I often found grammatical errors in the reading workbooks.

Overall, if your child is doing fine in school, but needs a little extra practice, or maybe your intent is to give your child an advantage by being ahead of grade level, Kumon might be the answer. However, if your child has troubles getting motivated, needs to work on the basics, and your intent is to get your child caught up, I would not recommend this program.

My husband and I have made the decision to leave the Kumon program and try something new. I'm sure you'll be seeing a review about the new program in a few months.