End of School Year Newsletter

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by   Katherine Bassett   
on   June 25, 2025

Dear Friends and Tutoring Advocates,

I hope this post finds everyone well and staying cool this week.

These first days of summer have always reminded me of the many transitions the end of the school year brings. As a child, the end of the school year reminds me of long days of bicycle riding, greeting the ice cream truck, finding a summer job, heading to the beach, staying up later during the evenings, reading incessantly, and spending time with friends.

At NJTC, the first days of summer also serve as a transition point for the organization.

We are gratified to serve so many public school scholars this year - well over 1,500 - and are proud to continue serving as the state’s focal point for tutoring. But even as we wish the school year farewell, the NJTC team remains hard at work, debriefing what we have learned and preparing for the summer program. Going into these summer months, we focus on a few key priorities:

Reviewing and Releasing Metrics and Data from the Previous Year of Tutoring
As you know, transparency is a key driver in everything we do. Please visit our webpage, which showcases the previous results and impact NJTC has provided our public schools.

Internally, we have some initial data that might interest you. NJTC recruited and trained 102 tutors and 28 site leaders last year. By year-end, NJTC had served 1,592 students statewide this school year, providing 20,682 tutoring sessions with 733,379 minutes in total tutoring time.

Though the preliminary results-oriented data we have received look very promising and positive, at this point, we have not yet received all the specific academic results NJTC has yielded this school year. However, we will have all the data collected by the end of July and be sure to pass this information on as soon as possible. We are very excited to share these results with you proactively, but equally look forward to diving into these results as they provide the NJTC team a moment to reflect and continue striving to improve our work.

Recruiting and Training our Tutors for the Upcoming School Year
While recruiting high-quality tutors continues throughout the year and well into the Summer, NJTC’s training and development program for next year’s tutors launches in August. Building a strong team of tutors is highly gratifying, and the development program we have activated is one of the strongest and most intense in the country. As mentioned in my last newsletter, NJTC uses the Teacher Leader Model Standards, which I developed while working at Educational Testing Service as our guide for training our site leaders. In our August newsletter, I plan to get a bit deeper into explaining the training and the infrastructure we have developed.

Launching the NJTC Summer School Program
Most of all, our work serving public school scholars continues throughout the year. During these summer months, NJTC has built a “summer slide” prevention program targeted at some of New Jersey’s most at-risk K-8 students, with a deep focus on math and ELA, through both district partners and our Boys and Girls Clubs community partners.

As we have said before, the work continues. Many scholars and families around the state depend on us, and we take that responsibility very seriously. Part of that effort is to over-communicate and ensure the people of New Jersey know our work and the opportunities we provide with our school district partners.

As always, if you have a question regarding NJTC or have a specific request or concern, please get in touch with me anytime. My email is katherine@njtutoringcorps.org, and I would love to hear from you.

Thank you!

With gratitude,

Katherine Bassett signature

Katherine Bassett, CEO