Tutoring Kids Who Don’t Need It is a Booming Business in Affluent Areas Where Parents Want to Stack the Deck

Many relatively well-off parents drive their kids to special activities after school. On top of trips to soccer practices and games or piano lessons and recitals, they increasingly make one more stop: a trip to their local after-school tutoring center.

In most cases these children don’t attend underfunded schools or need help competing with those in affluent districts. Nor are they high school students looking to boost their SAT or ACT scores before applying to college. They are typically doing just fine at their schools or are ahead of their classmates. And yet they get private, long-term tutoring on a regular basis.