At Achieve Learning we are committed first and foremost to providing the very best quality in education in order to ensure that the students in our community are able to compete at the highest levels of academic excellence. We may not be as big or as well-recognized as some of our for-profit competitors, but we believe the quality of our programs and services exceeds the standards of those companies whose primary objective is the bottom line. Here are five reasons to choose Achieve.

High Quality Instruction

Because of our policy of compensating tutors at competitive wages (the main reason for charging for our services at all), we are able to attract and hire only the most qualified and experienced instructors, many of whom have taught at well-recognized for-profit companies and have made the switch to Achieve Learning. All of our tutors have degrees from four-year colleges and have several years of teaching experience, and most of them hold an advanced degree, teaching credential, or both. Furthermore, all of our tutors are more than simply experts in their fields; they know how to make material accessible and enjoyable for students of diverse backgrounds and learning styles. Our tutors are also skilled in working with low-income students who may not have had the educational advantage of many of their peers (e.g., our two lead SAT instructors both received their teaching credentials through their service to urban, low-income communities). Tutors who pass through our rigorous application process must then complete training and undergo several weeks of observation. All tutors are held strictly accountable for the curriculum they deliver. Our summary of effectiveness data will illustrate that our tutoring services increase students' academic achievement in English-language arts, mathematics, and science.

Program Accountability

ALRC continuously monitors the overall effectiveness of its programs by the governance structure. Each tutor will write up brief monthly reports for each of his or her students, which will be signed off on by parents or guardians. One head tutor will be assigned to each school and will be responsible for checking tutor logs and progress reports to identify students that are not making adequate progress. In these cases head tutors will contact parents, teachers, and/or counselors to determine alternatives., i.e. SWD testing, tutor reassignment, or adjusting tutoring schedules. Head tutors will also be responsible for notifying headquarters about personnel updates. The secretary will be responsible for notifying LEAs about these personnel updates.

Targeted Instruction

The first step in our program is to determine the specific achievement goals of each of our students in order to develop a personalized learning plan designed to meet the individual needs of each of our students. According to the student’s grade level and subject area in need of attention, each student is given a Skills Assessment Test to help identify “skill gaps” (as identified by California content standards) and related academic problem areas. With an up-to-date notebook for each child, we carefully monitor and track the progress of each student by keeping record of attendance, worksheets completed, skill sets mastered, skill sets that still need improvement, and dated progress reports.

 

After specific achievement goals are determined, actual instruction is organized and presented to meet these goals with the following focus areas as our guide:

 

• the overall focus of our language-arts instruction is on the six dimensions of reading instruction outlined by CIERA, including phonic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, text comprehension, and motivation. Depending upon student needs, any one of these dimensions can be emphasized during a tutoring lesson;
• the focus of our mathematics instruction, based on the recommendation of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), shifts attention from training in basic skills, procedures, and memorization toward conceptual understanding and linkages between mathematics and real-world problems. This form of metacognitive instruction privileges problem solving and critical thinking within real-world contexts; and
• the focus of our science instruction follows the recommendation of recent research that extol the benefits of active learning in real-world situations. Our goal accordingly is to help students understand science well enough to apply scientific concepts and ideas to solve real-world problems.

Worksheets that focus on specific “skill gaps” from either Edhelper.com or CyberGuides are then generated before each tutoring session. Each student is guided through each worksheet and a record is kept of progress made. Once a student masters a particular skill set, he or she moves on to the next skill set. This helps us ensure that students improve according to California content standards and within California K-12 curriculum frameworks.

Our Assessment Tests are based on Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing and Code of Fair Testing Practices in Education.

State-Approved Curriculum

Our instruction is aligned with applicable state-adopted academic content standards, California K-12 curriculum frameworks, and local educational agencies (LEA) adopted instructional materials based on the State Board of Education (SBE) curriculum adoptions process. Lesson plans, for example, include CIERA (Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement) strategies (consistent with California educational standards), “Ed-helper.com” (a research-based online subscription service that provides printable worksheets in math, language-arts, and science that conform to California academic content standards and California K-12 curriculum frameworks), and “CyberGuides: Teacher Guides and Student Activities” (online literature-based lesson plans and rubrics based on California Language Arts Content Standards). Other lesson plans include those provided by GEM (The Gateway to Educational Materials), LessonPlansPage.com, and educational material provided by the State Board of Education Adopted Reading/Language Arts (RLA)-English-Language Development (ELD) Programs including the following: Program 1, RLA Basic; Program 2, RLA/ELD Basic; Program 3, Primary Language/ELD Basic; Program 4, Intensive Intervention RLA; and Program 5, Intensive Intervention for English Learners (EL).

http://www.sdcoe.k12.ca.us/score/cyberguide.html

Flexible Scheduling

Students attend a minimum of one-hour sessions (up to three) for a minimum of twice a week during the school year and four days a week during the summer. Both one-on-one and group tutoring are provided outside of the regular school day, either before school (between 7:00am and 8:00am), after school (between 3:00pm and 8:00pm), and during summer tutoring sessions (between 8:00am and 7:00pm).