Coaching4Change (C4C) recruits, hires, trains, and places College Mentors in K-12 schools to support academic, attendance, and behavioral/social-emotional growth. C4C provides ongoing professional development to College Mentors to build their career-readiness skills and professional networks. Our dual impact is described below:
1. Support high-need K-12 students with academic and social-emotional learning in urban and gateway communities.
Teachers On Demand (TOD) provides high-impact, in-person and virtual tutoring designed to accelerate learning and close achievement gaps for K-12 students. Our program deploys certified teachers and trained tutors who work side-by-side with classroom educators during the school day to deliver individualized and small-group instruction aligned with state standards. Each tutor receives structured onboarding, 40 hours of initial training, and ongoing professional development focused on the Science of Reading, culturally responsive practices, and data-driven instruction.
The North Carolina Volunteers in Public Schools is a 501(c)3 organization that recruits volunteer "Reading Buddies" for Brunswick County public schools. Volunteers are assigned to K-3 teachers who provide them with students to tutor, decodable books, and related materials. Volunteers typically work with two volunteers for 30 minutes each. Outside of being a Reading Buddy, volunteers are encouraged to support teachers by helping them with administrative work and occasionally providing duty free lunches.
Our tutors are AmeriCorps service members who dedicate a full year to advancing early literacy. They begin with a month of intensive September training that combines AIM Pathways to Proficient Reading coursework, Wilson Language Training Fundations Launch Workshops, and repeated practice of instructional activities to ensure readiness. After training, tutors are placed in small teams at elementary schools, where they provide daily 30-minute tutoring sessions to pairs of students.
Every learner deserves the confidence and support to succeed.
At K12 Tutoring, we bring together caring, expert educators and responsible technology to deliver safe, convenient, equitable, and personalized learning experiences. In partnership with schools, teachers, and families, we empower learners to achieve their goals. We also create opportunities for our tutors to thrive through impact, growth, flexibility, and community.
Kids First Education delivers high-dosage, research-based tutoring designed to accelerate student achievement, close learning gaps, and align seamlessly with school instruction. Serving districts across the Southeast, our program is built around small-group (1:4) or one-on-one sessions, conducted at least three times per week for 30–60 minutes, and embedded within the school day. This ensures instruction supports core classroom learning rather than functioning as an isolated add-on.
Key Features and Instructional Approach
As education researchers, we hear directly from district leaders about the realities they and their teams face every day. Leading a school district means weighing competing priorities and managing resources, while finding space for new ideas that promise to strengthen teaching and learning.
Each of these efforts has value and reflects a commitment to improvement. Yet amid the churn of initiatives, it’s worth remembering the strategies that have been proven to work time and again.
Tutoring is one of those strategies. Far from a passing trend that fades after a year, high-impact tutoring is a unicorn in the oft-changing tides of education reform: it is both a centuries-old, pedagogically sound and educator-approved way to teach children, and it’s an approach proven by hundreds of rigorous studies over decades.
Azura Literacy is a free, virtual, high-impact tutoring program for elementary students in which a caring, vetted, trained adult meets with a child through Zoom one-on-one twice a week to tutor them in reading. Students are given pre- and post-assessments to determine needs and measure growth, and tutors use digital children’s libraries and interactive activities to guide students in engaging, individualized reading practice. This helps them improve their reading skills, confidence, and motivation and make gains toward reading proficiently.
The Work ED program is an adaptable cybersecurity education suite for K-12 schools and communities. It utilizes the Work ED App, a gamified microlearning platform, to deliver current courses on topics like injection attacks and cross-site scripting.
The program has three components:
Cyber Masterminds: Provides students with hands-on, scenario-based training that aligns with industry standards and offers microcredentials.
Study Smart Tutors implements a High-Impact Tutoring (HIT) program designed to accelerate student learning and enhance academic outcomes through supplemental instruction of specific standards-based skills and concepts across all grade levels. The program offers personalized, intensive tutoring in small groups or one-on-one settings.