A startling number of New Jersey students have tested below grade level since the pandemic. But within the last year, the Murphy administration has put a major focus on literacy, and on high-impact tutoring programs in schools.
On Monday, the New Jersey Tutoring Corps released its 2023 – 2024 School Year Report, which outlines its success as one of the state’s key partners in high-impact tutoring.
“The report found that high-impact tutoring works,” said Katherine Bassett, chief executive officer of New Jersey Tutoring Corps.
“We found that our scholars — we refer to our students as scholars — in mathematics started with 4% grade-level proficient in math. At the end of our cycle, 26% were grade-level proficient in math. In literacy, we started with 12% grade-level proficiency and we closed with 30% grade-level proficiency,” Bassett said.
In an interview with NJ Spotlight News, Bassett said a third-party, nationally recognized researcher compiled and analyzed the data. Bassett says transparency is a critical component of their operation, especially as a recipient of state and philanthropic dollars.
The tutoring model works, Bassett said, “primarily because of the one-to-one relationships that we form with our scholars. We follow the Annenberg Institute’s tenets for high-impact tutoring. One of them is consistency, the same scholar working with the same tutor throughout the program, two to three times a week, 30 to 60 minutes a session and the ratios are so small, they make a huge difference.”
The highest teacher-student ratio they have is one teacher to three students. Improvements in math and literacy will reflect in students’ overall grades and in test scores, Bassett said.
