UPchieve, the free, 24/7 online tutoring and college counseling app for low-income students, announced Thursday it’s giving teachers in Title 1 middle schools and high schools a new tool to ensure their students get the academic support they need. The new offering, called “UPchieve for Teachers,” allows teachers to offer 1:1 support to their students. […]
An edtech founder shares some of his purposes and motivation for helping others.
GUEST COLUMN | by Adrián Ridner
Among the approximately41 million Americans with some college credit but no degree, about 40% are estimated to be first-generation students. As a first-generation college student myself and an immigrant from Latin America, I understand the unique struggles first-generation students face. Like many, I experienced economic hardship while earning my degree. Plus, the challenges associated with acclimating to a new culture, overcoming language barriers and simply navigating the higher education system made my college experience dramatically different than it was for my peers.
‘…the challenges associated with acclimating to a new culture, overcoming language barriers and simply navigating the higher education system made my college experience dramatically different…’
Unique Challenges
According to the Center for First-Generation Student Success, a first-generation student is one whose parents did not complete a four-year college or university degree — even if other family members have. As first-generation students, we face unique challenges, including financial constraints, lack of academic support, and other barriers that impede our ability to complete a degree. With such an enormous population dropping out of college, whether struggling from self-doubt, poor grades or being the first in the family to pursue higher education, the need for targeted educational pathways and support systems for all students to obtain a degree is critical to ensure economic mobility for our country.
Many who started down the path of higher education without completing their degrees are left with the burden of debt without the benefit of a credential. I recognize the challenges first-generation students face, having experienced the struggles of navigating an educational system that wasn’t built with students like us in mind.
Creating Opportunities
This personal experience has fueled my commitment to democratize education and create opportunities for learners who, like I once did, find themselves outside the traditional system. Today, my company is a platform dedicated to providing accessible, affordable and flexible education for all—especially those who need it most. Our goal is to help learners open the door to the life-changing impact of education.
Not only can traditional educational pathways often leave students of color and those from historically underserved populations behind, but they also can reinforce systemic inequities and limit opportunities for upward mobility. First-generation students often live in rural areas, where there may be fewer community and school resources than in urban areas which tend to receive more funding. It also may come as a surprise that more than 40% of full-time students and more than 74% of part-time college students need to work while pursuing their education.
In addition to work, they also may be juggling childcare responsibilities; one in four undergraduate students have children. Even with financial aid to help offset the cost of tuition, those who most need the support often fall short, especially among students with more family responsibilities or those from historically underserved populations. The need for non-traditional educational options has never been more urgent, and within this context, we must create innovative solutions to provide alternative pathways to success.
Making Education Accessible
One example is the Keys to College initiative, which offers flexible on-ramps and pathways for students to earn an affordable degree at a fraction of the cost of traditional tuition. This initiative is built on the College Saver program, which offers low-cost college credits that transfer to more than 1,200 universities. By offering multiple pathways to degree completion – including full and partial – this approach has made education accessible to diverse learners, breaking down barriers that have long prevented them from achieving academic success.
The College Saver program includes the most extensive American Council on Education (ACE) online library, featuring more than 220 college or graduate level courses. Backed by decades of learning science research, the curriculum is designed to be engaging, supportive and personalized, helping learners build the confidence they need to succeed.
‘Backed by decades of learning science research, the curriculum is designed to be engaging, supportive and personalized, helping learners build the confidence they need to succeed.’
The impact of the College Saver program has been profound. To date, the program has saved students more than $270 million in tuition costs and empowered thousands of learners to earn over 400,000 college credits. These are not just numbers—they represent breakthrough moments for individuals who may have struggled academically or financially to further their education.
Take, for instance, Tiaka Hyatt-Geter, a San Francisco Bay Area single mom of three kids and an HR analyst, who completed her college degree while balancing work and family responsibilities. Her success is a testament to the life-changing potential of affordable and flexible education. Or, the son of migrant workers who spent his youth in Stockton, California balancing school with working in the fields. Like me, he is the first in his family to complete a college degree and has plans to continue his education by earning a master’s degree. Because of his determination and with the support of my company’s flexible online College Saver course library, he could continue his education while working and caring for his four-year-old son.
Transformative for Many
This program has been transformative for many, particularly women and people of color. Among a subset of College Saver students surveyed that received additional coaching support from Study.com tutors, 68% of graduates are women, and 77% identify as non-white. The findings underscore that technology can serve as a bridge to further education, but it can’t replace the importance of personal connection with a coach to provide motivation, accountability and support. Moreover, 67% of graduates report income growth, and 87% report increased confidence and skills in the job market. One such graduate, a working mother from the San Francisco Bay area, said the program helped her achieve her dreams without sacrificing her family’s well-being.
My company has always been guided by a mission to ensure that all learners, especially first-generation and non-traditional students, have access to the life-changing impact of education. As we look to the future, our vision is to continue innovating and scaling our efforts to provide alternative educational pathways that build a more diverse and inclusive workforce.
Together with community-based organizations and higher education institutions, we can fuel initiatives like Keys to College that offer on-ramps to success for all learners, regardless of where they start, to ensure everyone has the opportunity to achieve their full potential.
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Adrián Ridner is CEO and Co-Founder of Study.com, a leading online learning platform helping over 30 million learners and educators monthly, on a mission to open the door to the life-changing impact of education for all. Connect with Adrián on LinkedIn.
This is a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS) that enhances the educational experience. The digital platform connects educators, students, and parents to facilitate interactive and engaging learning. It provides an app and webpage user-friendly interface for educators to efficiently create, manage, and deliver educational content. Administrators can effortlessly set up classes and curriculums, add users, and assign content, whether it is custom or pre-existing. Students can access this content, complete assignments, and track their progress. Students and teachers can use a stylus on the app to write directly on the assignment. It also has a helpful writing feature to display work. Part of its real value is actually quite basic: it allows efficient communication between teachers, students, and parents.
EdQuill was developed by a team with Ushapriya Ravilla to address the evolving needs of modern education. EdQuill aims to improve the teaching and learning experience, reduce administrative burdens on educators, and foster greater parent involvement in students’ education. It is available to educational institutions, learning centers, tutors, and educators. Access EdQuill by signing up for a free trial or scheduling a demo with EdQuill’s expert representatives.
In two short years, EdQuill has helped over 100 educators impact more than 2,000 students nationwide. Using the platform led to a 40% decrease in printing costs and increased productivity in administrative tasks for 100% of teachers. For these reasons and more, EdQuill earned a Cool Tool Award (finalist) for “Best Classroom Management Solution” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more.
Cignition delivers high-impact K-12 virtual tutoring, led by experienced educators who produce proven, repeatable results in student success. Tutors complete internal assessments, broken down by grade level, to validate their qualifications. Using classroom data, students are initially matched for tutoring. Teachers and tutors then utilize data from mastery progress, surveys, and online activities to continuously track and enhance student progress within the established groups.
Cignition’s research-based approach focuses on data-informed instruction and collaborative learning, encouraging student-to-student interaction to build deep conceptual understanding. Instead of the traditional model of learning through repetition, Cignition tutors focus on the conceptual goals of each topic. Teachers tell Cignition they can see the change in their students’ engagement and participation after receiving tutoring.
Making dashboards and tools available to help tutors understand each student’s most immediate needs also contributes to the success of the thousands of virtual tutoring sessions delivered by Cignition. Research on Cignition’s learning model, backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates and Overdeck Family Foundations, shows an effect size indicating dramatic student growth. The amount of growth shown in the study suggests that students complementing their learning with a year of Cignition tutoring would advance by up to two years’ learning gain with their robust intervention model.
In addition to the collaborative learning model, Cignition is committed to connecting students with certified educators who have experience crafting personalized learning experiences. Keeping instruction inquiry-focused empowers students to build academic confidence and critical 21st-century skills.
For these reasons and more, Cignition was named “Best Collaborative Learning Solution” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more.
Access to high-quality test prep is crucial for students seeking higher education acceptance, merit-based aid, and course credits. With courses/tools from The Princeton Review and 1-to-1 tutoring from Tutor.com, this award-winning solution helps institutional partners scale equitable support for students.
Tutor.com and The Princeton Review provide many features and benefits.
Instructor-led in-person/LiveOnline test prep. Interactive instruction, proctored/self-administered practice tests, personalized score reports, practice questions/drills, TPR books.
Self-paced courses. Video lessons, online drills, practice tests.
Teacher Professional Development. Live instruction, ongoing support, and books/resources for educators to provide TPR’s test prep to their students.
College Admissions Self-Paced program. College-goals tracking for students.
Administrator Dashboard. Course information, student scores/progress, test response analyses.
Tutor.com test prep is:
Anytime, anywhere support. 24/7, 1-to-1, on-demand/scheduled tutoring in 200+ subjects, including 25 AP and 27 IB subjects, plus PSAT, SAT, ACT target topic areas;
Devices. Computer, tablet, mobile;
Self-paced resources. TPR SAT/ACT Essentials (video lessons, practice tests/score reports, drills); ASVAB practice; NCLEX-RN QBank; GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT practice tests; and other tools;
Client portal. On-demand reports, real-time analytics, and early intervention alerts to address curricular challenges and provide just-in-time student support;
Teacher dashboard. Teacher-Referred Tutoring and student engagement information.
For decades, they have been catalysts for student achievement. Their commitment is demonstrated through partnerships that make high-quality test prep available for all students. They promote college and career readiness, help millions of students achieve their next-step educational goals, and support the important work of our nation’s educators. For these reasons and more, Tutor.com & The Princeton Review is a Cool Tool Award Winner for “Best Test Prep Solution” as part of The EdTech Awards 2024 from EdTech Digest. Learn more.
Nikita Dutt, a second-year student at the University of California, Davis, didn’t come to college to work with young children.
But since September, she’s spent a couple of hours per day as a tutor through the California Volunteers College Corps, a state-funded partnership program that places college students into paid internships.
She earns $700 per month, provided she tutors elementary students for at least 20 hours per two weeks. She works on math with students in Los Angeles and San Francisco, beamed in through a host program that uses virtual-first tutoring.
Sometimes, Dutt says, it can be hard to keep the students engaged, especially when they are receiving the tutoring from a busy classroom, which often happens. But she recalls one student, a sixth grader with a learning disability. He was struggling to grasp multiplication. She worked with him, diligently, for about five weeks. One day, it just clicked. It was a big deal for the family and the student, and his teacher later told her that whatever she was doing was working.
“And I realized, like, how much difference I made in the student’s learning, and so I really want to help other students as well,” Dutt says.
Dutt is one of the college students being conscripted as high-dose tutors for struggling schools. Pandemic relief funds allowed many schools to set up these programs. But with ESSER funding nearly lapsed, schools have to find other sources to keep the programs going.
Finding a steady pool of affordable tutors has proven tough, and that’s where these college students come in: Leaders of some organizations say that college students and community members help swell the number of tutors available to K-12 classrooms and may also allow schools to more sustainably fund them.
Dutt is also the beneficiary of a new high-dose tutoring training program that hopes to boost the quality of tutors, something researchers have flagged as a challenge for schools.
A Closing Window
Much of the pandemic relief funding made available to schools went to tutoring. The Biden Administration identified high-dose tutoring — usually defined as regular, intensive, small-group tutoring — as a plausible way to give a jolt to student learning after the pandemic.
But now, with federal funds dwindling, schools have to rely on states or other sources to keep tutoring programs going.
Funding is the biggest barrier to tutoring in schools, says Alvin Makori, a doctoral student at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. Makori co-authored a research paper about the challenges to schools offering tutor services at scale. The paper — based on surveys of teachers at charter and public schools in California — also noted concerns about tutor quality and trouble finding the space and time to work tutoring into the school day as problem areas for the schools it inspected. (The study did not look at virtual high-dose tutoring, of the kind provided by some of the organizations discussed here.)
The report also recommends that schools partner with outside organizations to provide tutoring services.
That’s where a coalition behind a new tutor training program thinks it can help.
A couple of high-dose tutoring-specific collections of “nanocourses,” bite-sized lessons under 15 minutes each meant to train tutors, were recently released on Arizona State University’s Community Educator Learning Hub platform. The collections were the result of a collaboration between Annenberg Learner, Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and Step Up Tutoring, aimed at providing tutors to beleaguered schools. Starting in the fall, the partnership will also offer a microcredential in high-dose tutoring competency.
These tutoring resources have the opportunity to build a corps of tutors across the country, because training is a big hurdle to getting willing volunteers and college students in place and to be effective, says Korbi Adams, a senior program manager affiliated with ASU.
Step Up Tutoring has had about 170 tutors go through the program to pick up instructional skills.
During the pandemic, investment into broadband and internet in low-income areas in places like Los Angeles made it possible to connect volunteers to work one-on-one with students, says Sam Olivieri, CEO of Step Up Tutoring.
The need for high-dose tutoring is still really significant, Olivieri says. But there are questions around sustainability.
College students are a promising source of tutors, she argues. They come with relationship- building skills, she says, and tend to have an easier time connecting with younger students who often want to know what it’s like to be in college.
There’s another reason schools might be eager to embrace the model of harnessing the power of college student-tutors, Olivieri says: Step Up is an approved federal work-study provider on 16 college campuses, meaning that the students’ pay comes from a sustainable source. They also work with California’s College Corps program. From those two sources, they’ve gotten about 350 tutors, she says, making it the main pool from which they draw tutors these days.
For the schools that work with Step Up, that provides the benefits of mentorship, with their children connecting to college students, and financial stability, Olivieri says. Not all of those students are education majors. But a lot of them show potential interest in or a proclivity for exploring the education field, Olivieri says.
Dutt, the UC Davis student, is glad for the opportunity.
She’s worked with six students, all between third and sixth grade. Right now, she tutors two students who take lessons from home and two who take them from school. She is also a substitute tutor, filling in when others can’t make it in the mornings.
A computer science major, she says she previously had no interest in education as a profession. “But then when I started tutoring, I realized how much I liked it, and how rewarding it felt to help students grow academically and instill confidence in them,” she says. “And so I think it kind of found like a newfound passion in teaching and tutoring and the education field.”
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