While some students spent the summer visiting grandma or lounging at the beach, other kids were cracking the books to get ready for school.

For these students, the learning didn't stop when school did.

And to prevent their minds from getting rusty, their parents got them tutors —- whether they needed them or not.

Consider 13-year-old Priyanka Narula of Lilburn, for example. The straight-A student spent her summer reading novels and solving math problems at Kumon on Pleasant Hill Road in Duluth. Her mother, Surinder Kaur, invested in a year's worth of tutoring so her daughter, an accelerated math student at Trickum Middle School, could maintain her edge.

"I didn't want her to be away from her education," Kaur said. "I'm looking at the wide picture, not just eighth grade. Kumon trains kids to manage their time wisely and study. It gets her ahead of the class."

Priyanka has gone to Kumon for about 45 minutes each week since late June to study pre-algebra. She said her summer sessions have prepared her to breeze through eighth-grade math.

"It makes you feel smarter in class because you already know stuff," she said.

National tutoring companies such as Kumon, Sylvan Learning Center and Club Z see a spike in enrollment over summer break when kids have more time for studying. Thousands of students use their services during the peak season to prepare for the new school year.

"Summer is the best time to work on skills," said Meredith Higgins, Sylvan's district manager for Atlanta East. "If a student doesn't do anything [academic] over the summer, they can lose up to 20 percent of what they learned during the prior school year."

Parents who invest in tutoring can pay the equivalent of a semester of college tuition so their kid can avoid summer brain drain. The services charge hourly and often offer financing plans.

"We don't really go on vacation anyway because of my husband's busy job," said Libby Poppleton, whose daughter Dana, 11, overcame her reading problems at Sylvan. She has logged 183 hours there since December. "We want to keep the momentum going. My husband and I feel we need to give Dana every opportunity to succeed to the best of her ability."

Enrollment at Sylvan Learning Center in Georgia jumped 9 percent in Georgia and 17 percent in the metro Atlanta area this summer. Kumon reported a 12 percent gain in Georgia since June, when there were 6,127 students enrolled in programs. Nationally, there are 190,341 students in Kumon, an increase of 8 percent since June 2007.

Failing scores on the Georgia Criterion-Referenced Competency Test contributed to those increases as parents booked tutors instead of sending their kids to summer school to study for retests.

At Club Z in Cherokee County, of the 75 students who booked summer tutoring, 50 of them needed help passing the CRCT. Others wanted to get ahead. There were 1,140 Club Z students statewide in June and July.

"Our mission is to raise the student achievement level by giving them a clear understanding of the subject matter they are learning at school," Atlanta area director Kathy Maher said. "We use the school's curriculum."

For Hannah Sears, who passed the challenging eighth-grade math CRCT but failed math class, it was summer tutoring or else.

"She was reading at a fifth-grade level in eighth grade and having a very difficult time," said Michael Sears, Hannah's dad. "I wanted her to be ready for the ninth grade."

"Or he was going to send me to military school," Hannah added.

Sears invested $10,000 in tutoring services. Hannah went to summer school and came to Sylvan in Suwanee for 20 hours a week with only one break for a family trip to St. Lucia. She will continue tutoring sessions during the school year.

"Hannah started off behind, but now she's ahead," Higgins said. "She's mastered the skills of a ninth-grader."

Now Hannah's eager to start classes at Collins Hill High. "I didn't really pay much attention in school in eighth grade —- or in all my years in school, actually," Hannah said. "Now I want to learn."

Some kids who aren't even in grade school had summer tutors.

Jennifer Salama, who runs a taekwondo studio with her husband, enrolled her 4-year-old daughter, Marina, at Kumon to get her ready for pre-K. "I had enrolled my son when he was 3, and now he's going into second grade and reads at close to a fourth-grade level," she said.

Priyanka, the Trickum Middle student, said the mental exercise this summer prepared her to hit the ground sprinting at Trickum.

"If you slack off, it's kind of hard for you to get back into school," she said. "If you just keep on working, you are ready when school starts again."