The New Jersey Tutoring Corps (NJTC) announced today a dramatic expansion of its high-impact tutoring program to critical areas across the state. Specifically, as classrooms open their doors to students throughout the Garden State, NJTC will begin the 2023-2024 school year serving 41 school locations, an estimated 1300 students statewide, growing by 100% since its pilot school year program launched last year. Founded as a needed corrective response to the state’s dramatic learning loss exacerbated by the pandemic, the newly created public-private partnership was initially established by First Lady Tammy Murphy and anchor institutions such as the Overdeck Foundation, the Community Foundation of New Jersey, the Tepper Foundation, New Jersey Childrens’ Foundation, the Prudential Foundation, and the Debra and Kenneth Caplan Foundation.

Last year, with New Jersey Student Learning Assessments showing that overall, 64.6% and 51.1% of NJ students were not meeting grade-level expectations in Math and ELA, NJTC launched its initial pilot program, serving approximately 500 scholars in Hunterdon, Mercer County, Essex County, Sussex County, and Camden counties. Through the work of the NJTC tutors in these areas, the percentage performing at grade level in math improved from 16% to 40% and in literacy from 23% to 40%. This Summer, as part of its rapid strategic growth plan, NJTC launched in 23 locations and supported 2,000+ scholars.

“Right now, we are focused on rapidly scaling our high-impact tutoring throughout the state while still maintaining the strongest level of quality and results,” stated Katherine Bassett, CEO of the NJTC. “There is a deep sense of urgency at this moment, and our mission these last few months has been to create a solid and consistent institution on which teachers and school leaders can rely. As we and others nationally have shown, high-impact tutoring works, and the need is in high demand. Our dramatic growth is a testament to the hard work of the NJTC team, who have worked tirelessly since we first launched. Right now, NJTC has field staff throughout the state—site coordinators, instructional coaches, and tutors—who stand committed to ensuring every child receives the strongest public education possible. While our year-over-year growth is significant, we are not done. Even though the school year has started, we will continue to work to add additional schools that need help and train more tutors in our state to ensure everyone who needs assistance will receive it.”

“NJTC, which began just last year, has grown significantly,” stated Ashley Bencan, Chief Operating Officer. “This has been a massive rapid-response effort, and we are already seeing a difference. Special thanks go to our many supporters who helped establish this unique all-hand-on-deck public-private partnership. With the support of elected officials, local and statewide funders, allocated funding in the state budget, and our passionate team members, high-impact localized tutoring throughout the state is becoming a reality.”

During the last budget cycle, Senate Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz and Senate Education Committee Chair Vin Gopal prioritized funding for NJTC in the FY2024 budget, providing the organization its second year of budget funding in a row and the only tutoring program receiving funding in each budget.

NJTC co-designs tutoring programs with schools and districts, ensuring that its research-based, evidence-rich, locally customized program specifically meets the needs of individual partners. NJTC staff members provide responsive, personalized, and hands-on instruction aligned to New Jersey state standards. School partners co-design each implementation. Tutors are often embedded throughout classrooms during the school day and receive support from instructional coaches and site coordinators. Tutors may also serve scholars in 30 to 60-minute sessions after school three times per week. The program strives to provide a 1:1 up to 1:3 tutor to scholar ratio for each tutoring session, with sessions held two to three times weekly.