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Children's Education & Tutoring
Teach the children well, and you could do pretty well, too.

Colleges keep getting more competitive, and parents want to give their children every possible edge--even in preschool. Add to that the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires schools to provide tutoring services if their programs don't meet performance standards for two consecutive years, and you have a solid market for education and tutoring. According to data from Eduventures LLC, an educational market research and consulting firm in Boston, the total market for products and services, including tutoring, test-preparation services and supplemental content, for kids in kindergarten through 12th grade grew 6 percent in the 2004-2005 school year to $21.9 billion.

Online tutoring, a $115 million market, is one of the hottest areas, especially with high school and middle school students, notes Tim Wiley, a senior analyst for K-12 solutions at Eduventures. Selling tutoring services to schools is also sizzling, though Wiley says entrepreneurs pursuing businesses in this arena should be prepared to meet all the local, regional and state school requirements. For grades three through eight, reading and math tutoring are always in high demand, but look to science tutoring as a growth area in the next few years. Preschool education, too, is expected to grow rapidly, says Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute of Early Education Research at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey--especially as more states mandate preschool for all children.