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 within our schools.

Today, the New Jersey tutoring corps is sharing some equally surprising results, showing the success they've had as one of the state's key partners in high impact tutoring.

They work with students one on one or in small groups of up to three students in both literacy and math.

Here now to share more details about their 2023 24 school year report is the New Jersey tutoring core CEO Catherine Bassett.

Catherine, so great to have you on the show with us tonight.

Today, your organization, the New Jersey Tutoring Corps, released new data about your high impact tutoring in New Jersey schools over the last school year.

What did that report find?

The report found that high impact tutoring works.

First and foremost, that is the key.

Finding the data to support that is both quantitative and qualitative quantitatively.

We found that our scholars, we refer to our students as scholars in mathematics, started with 4% of our scholars 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 proficient, and we closed with 30% grade level proficient in addition to grade level proficiency.

Because some of our scholars in a 15 to 25 week program, if they are 2 to 3 grade levels behind, are not going to attain grade level proficiency.

However, they demonstrated significant growth, and that metric is equally important.

We know that a lot of these students were impacted by COVID learning loss, but New Jersey schools, especially in our more urban areas, have seen grade level students grade levels behind far beyond before COVID, I should say.

This study was conducted by a third party, and I'm just curious how they evaluated the growth since your organization started the tutoring.

Cycle is externally evaluated by a nationally recognized researcher.

That is very important to us.

We provide her with our quantitative and qualitative of data, all of it.

She analyzes it using psychometric principles and gives it back to us in the form of a report.

The report is we don't change anything in the report.

We simply add graphics to it.

The reports are issued to the public through social media, through a media release.

They are also on our website.

We are completely transparent in our program and that is critically important to us.

We are we are a recipient of state funding.

We are a recipient of philanthropic funding.

It's very important to us and it's a key core competency of our program that our data is transparent.

So Katherine, I'm curious, do these results that you're seeing in this third party report now are expected or do you expect that they will now translate to higher test scores for students, also to higher grades for students?

Definitely.

If if you are a scholar who was not grade level proficient and you are in, let's say, fourth grade, how are you going to do well on your NJ SLA assessment?

How are you going to do well on your report card in math or literacy if you're not grade level proficient?

When you are grade level proficient, you're going to demonstrate much higher results.

And for those who were 2 to 3 grade levels behind who demonstrated significant growth, they too will do better.

On your state assessment and on their grades, the report card grades.

We know that Governor Murphy has put, along with the legislature here in New Jersey, has put a huge emphasis in the last year on literacy and on improving test scores.

You're working in math and literacy, but you mentioned at the top that high impact tutoring works in just a few seconds.

Why does it work?

It works primarily because of the 1 to 1 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 2 to 3 times a week, 30 to 60 minutes a session.

And the ratios are so small they make a huge difference.

And we should mention this is happening within the school day.

Catherine Bassett, Chief Executive Officer, officer of the New Jersey tutoring core.

Thank you.

Thank you, Joanna.