Why Your Tutoring Program Is Quietly Failing Students With Aly Murray

00:00
Speaker 1
Foreign. 

00:03
Speaker 2
The tutoring model that you're using at your school is probably inequitable and you don't even realize it. We've all defaulted to the same playbook after school tutoring programs. They look great on paper. Students can attend, tutors are available. The problem solved, right? Hold on, not so fast. What actually happens is that students who depend on the school bus, they can't stay. Students with part time jobs, they can't make it. Students caring for younger siblings, they're not going to show up. And the students who need the support the most, they're the ones that are least likely to access it. Meanwhile, research is clear. When students get the right academic support, it changes their entire trajectory. We're talking about college enrollment, career readiness, life outcomes, not just test scores. 

00:57
Speaker 2
But if your tutoring program only serves the kids who can physically be there between 3 and 5pm, you're leaving behind students who need you the most. And that's not just a resource problem, it's a design problem. Today I'm talking with Allie Murray. She's the founder of Upchieve, and we're talking about why human tutoring that's available 247 might be exactly what your school needs. And spoiler alert, it's super affordable now. I'm Danny Bauer and this is Better Leaders Better Schools, the original Ruckus cast for visionary leaders who want to do school different even within a traditional system, so that we create a campus experience worth showing up for. Thanks to Ruckus makers just like you, this show ranks in the top 1% of nearly 4 million podcasts worldwide. So once again, thanks for pressing play and listening. 

01:55
Speaker 2
We'll be right back after a quick message from our show sponsors. Still scrambling for supplies like it's 1999, ODP Business Solutions streamlines everything from pencils to projectors so you can focus on what matters making an impact. Visit ODP business.comeducation to learn more. That's ODP business.com education as districts look ahead to the coming school year, the groundwork starts earlier than you might think. The way professional learning is designed can shape culture, collaboration and stability long before students arrive. Frontline Education's 2026 K12 lens report takes a closer look at how districts are connecting professional growth to stronger staffing stability. Download the full [email protected] leaders to learn more. That's frontlineducation.com/leaders IXL is a go to support for classroom teachers because its adaptive platform makes differentiated instruction easy. See for yourself. Get started [email protected] leaders. That's ixl.com leaders. The best leadership coaches, they don't hand you answer. 

03:34
Speaker 2
They help you discover the insight yourself through curiosity and inquiry. Questions that help you see your situation differently. That's exactly what digital Danny does. And you can get started with [email protected] Ruckus. All right. And Allie, welcome to the show. 

03:59
Speaker 1
Thank you, Daniel. So glad to be here. 

04:01
Speaker 2
Right on. So tell me the story of Le Cortland. 

04:04
Speaker 1
Absolutely. So Le Cortland is one of the earliest students that we helped on Upchieve. She was a. So she's from Georgia. She was a sophomore in high school when she took algebra 1 for the first time. So for those of you on the call, you probably realize or know that's pretty late to be taking Algebra one, actually. And on top of that, her first time taking the class, after just a few months, her grade had already fallen to a circle, and she was worried that she was going to fail the class. Math had never been her strong suit, but she was really struggling with this with algebra one, like a lot of students do. And fortunately for McCortlyn, she actually went online and she tried searching. She said, where can I get free tutoring? She googled free tutoring, and she found Upchieve. 

04:50
Speaker 1
So she did start getting tutoring on Upchieve. And by the end of that first year, her sophomore year, not only had she managed to pass Algebra 1, but she'd actually improved her grade to a 91. And she actually then went on over the next two years of high school to make over 200 requests on UPCHIE. She got help in just about every subject that we offer on the platform, from math to college counseling. And with the support, she got both academic in her classes to keep her grades up, as well as exploring options for where to go to college. She needed to stay close to home. But she had some big aspirations. She wanted to become a nurse. 

05:27
Speaker 1
And so using Upchie, she was able to not only keep her grades up and get grades high enough to enroll in a local program, but she successfully enrolled, and she's now she's at her local community college, and she's well on her way to accomplishing that goal of becoming a nurse. 

05:44
Speaker 2
Yeah. Fantastic. I love those success stories. I know listeners, you know, ruckus makers, checking this out. 

05:49
Speaker 1
They. 

05:50
Speaker 2
They want to hear especially student success stories, too. I don't know how your story is similar or different, but I know that's important to you as well. And, yeah, what Would you like to share in terms of your background? 

06:04
Speaker 1
Absolutely. Yeah. I think that for me, the motivation for starting up Chief was really based on my own personal story. And a lot of the inspiration and the original insights for the unique way that we go about serving students is again, based on my own personal experience. So I grew up as a low income student. My so not dissimilar from Le Cortland grew up low income. I was raised by a single mom who was an immigrant to the United States from Cuba. And so when I would go home and be working on homework or college applications, I didn't have really the support that I needed there. My mom wasn't always able to help me. And then the same thing with school, my schools, I moved around a lot. I attended tons of different Title 1 schools throughout my 12 years of public education. 

06:53
Speaker 1
And I frequently felt like my schools didn't have all of the support I needed available IHs. And so with that kind of lack of support both from my school and at home, it felt really hard to figure out how to navigate what would happen after high school. And I fortunately, like, you know, one of the differences between me and La Cortland, I was always pretty good at math, so I didn't necessarily need a math tutor, but I really needed that help with navigating the college application process. And without that, I actually enrolled at a local community college. And from there it took me six years to get a bachelor's degree. And at one point, I almost gave up during those six years. And so it was very much, it was a very hard journey for me. 

07:33
Speaker 1
But on the flip side of that, so not only did I experience how hard it was to access support, but I also got to see what getting to college, what a big difference. Getting to college and getting to the right college for me was able to make in terms of helping me achieve economic upward mobility. So the school I transferred to was the University of Pennsylvania. And that really opened a lot of doors for me and helped me get my first job out of college as a trader at JP Morgan. And so really just set me up for an entirely different kind of life than I would have had otherwise. 

08:03
Speaker 2
Yeah, right on. I resonate, you know, with single mom. It took me five years from the bachelor's support. It was, I don't know, the focus on colleges was different when I was going through school. And so, you know, I think about it as a teacher and an administrator and how we support students and applying the schools. But believe it or not, Ali, like I applied to One school, and somehow I got in. Right. Oh my God. I had no backup plan. Like, what would have happened if they're like, you suck and you can't come here? I don't know. Right, right. Somehow I got in and, you know, the rest is history. Go ahead. 

08:41
Speaker 1
But that's actually. It doesn't surprise me at all because that's exactly the sort of thing we see students doing when they don't have access to something like Upchieve. And I similarly, my first time around applying to school, I applied to the community college, which obviously I got in. I applied to Harvard, which was the only other, like, you know, famous school that I knew. And I applied to this, a local state school that was too far away for me to live at home and like, actually was just too expensive to attend, as it turned out. Right. And so it was funny that, you know, yeah. Students often don't apply to enough schools if they don't have the college counseling help to navigate and build that college list. So. 

09:18
Speaker 2
Doesn't surprise me though. 

09:19
Speaker 1
It is unfortunate. 

09:21
Speaker 2
Yeah. My mom, you know, she didn't actually, I don't think anybody in my, like, immediate family, aunts and uncles, they. They didn't go to college. Right. So there wasn't like that support too. Like, this is how you play the game. But enough about me. You talked about how like, Upchieve, you know, looked at tutoring in a different way. Right. So how do you sort of change or challenge the model of tutoring and the outcomes that tutoring provides with students? 

09:49
Speaker 1
Absolutely. Yeah. I think tutoring is completely misunderstood and in fact undervalued as a tool that schools should be using to drive outcomes for their students. And I mean, more than just test scores. So I think that's kind of the common thing that people have in their minds. It's like, oh, tutoring, that's going to help me get my test scores up. And absolutely it should do that. A good tutoring program will do that. But I actually believe that tutoring can drive life outcomes for students as well. So there's this great report by the Brookings Institute where they actually looked at, they looked at the difference in college enrollment between low income and high income students. And they found that if you control for differences in measures of academic preparation, over 70% of the gap in college enrollment between low income and high income students disappears. 

10:38
Speaker 1
And so students are actually, when you look at similarly students who are achieving similarly from an academic perspective, those students enroll in college at a much more similar rate. Right. And so that goes to show that if we can actually do more to help students become academically prepared, that will actually have a big impact on college enrollment. And obviously like there are sometimes, you know, GPA can determine which kinds of schools you can get into. But even besides that, what I think the report is really showing is that students who see themselves as good students are the ones that will go to college. If you have bad grades in high school, there's no way your identity is going to be, I'm a student who is bad at school, therefore you don't want to go do more school after high school. Right. 

11:22
Speaker 1
And so simply by helping students get better grades, we can actually have a huge impact on whether or not they'll want to enroll in college. And so people think about test scores a lot, but actually grades matter. And I think one of the other conclusions you can draw from this is that students grades in all their classes matter. So it's not just their math class or their reading. Right. Actually students need to be getting good grades in their science class and their history class because all of that is building the student's self identity. Am I a student who's good at school or not? And then I. The final thing you can take away from this report, we often think about tutoring as a tool for the lowest, like lowest achieving students in a school. 

11:59
Speaker 1
Our bottom 10% or 20% of students, how can we help them pass the test? But there's so much impact that tutoring can have on what I'd call like the middle majority of students in a school, Students who they maybe aren't actually, maybe they're not failing the test or maybe they're actually pretty close to passing. But you know, they're your B or C students. And those students, by getting a pretty small amount of tutoring could realize much more of their pot and again change their self identity, change how they see themselves as the kind of student who's good at school, who's good at subjects that they might not have thought they could be good at. And that really sets them up for success down the line. 

12:34
Speaker 1
So that's kind of the first thing I'll say is like we see tutoring as so much more than how do we improve their math test scores. It's really more holistic. How do we use tutoring as a tool to drive. Actually ultimately it's about driving college enrollment outcomes for us. 

12:48
Speaker 2
Yeah, in the identity piece is huge too. Right. So just like belief that you can do it, you know, the confidence that quiet confidence inside you hopefully you got great support systems around you. But at times, you know, you're just gonna, you have to rely on yourself. Right? And so that comes from within. And we all have that negative self talk too. So you need to build up those examples of success or whatever so that you can quiet, you know, quiet that noise. So I really appreciate, you know, what up she was doing for kids when it comes to that. You know, I constantly tell leaders like you can't be everything to everyone. And that's sort of like a pet peeve of mine that schools try to like do everything, be everything to their community. 

13:31
Speaker 2
It's kind of, I don't know if it's coming from a good place or not. I think in some respects it is like service, but in other ways it's like people pleasing too, which is maybe the dark side of it. But that's all to say like, you know, you are leading well in that you're making a choice, right? Leadership is about choices. If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to? And I believe that Upchieve is like focused on low income and title one school. So correct me if I'm wrong, but if that is true, like why make a choice like that? Right? 

14:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a great question. So for us, you know, we are a nonprofit, so 501c3 nonprofit. And again, based on my personal experience as a low income student, really observing that low income students face unique barriers to accessing support when they need it and wanting to build something that was exceptionally good at helping students overcome those kinds of barriers. And so the format of our tutoring, you know, the way that it works, we're available 24 7. Any student who attends a Title 1 middle school or high school in the United States can use upchieve to access tutoring. Doesn't matter what time it is, doesn't matter what subject. We cover all core academic subjects for grades six through 12 and it's free, so it's available again 24 7. 

14:48
Speaker 1
It takes our average wait time from a student requesting help in a specific subject to getting matched is just about two minutes. So it's incredibly fast for a student to actually be talking to a live human being and getting help. And that is so important when you're talking about serving low income students because I think this is one of the big drawbacks that I see with after school tutoring models is if your solution is available, like if you're offering for tutoring is it's up to students to take advantage of it. If you want students to take advantage of it has to be available 24, seven, ideally late at night in students homes. Because that's how you overcome some of the barriers that low income students face in particular. And that's where their biggest gap in support often is, right? 

15:34
Speaker 1
Because you know, the majority of low income students have parents, both their parents didn't go to college. And so there's a really big gap in that kind of late night in the home support. And then on top of that, when we see this kind of like the after school tutoring model, which today is still the most common form of tutoring that schools offer, is kind of the status quo I would call it. It's incredibly inequitable because of the fact that. So first of all, if you don't offer transportation after tutoring, you're going to lose all the kids that depend on the school bus to get home. I was one of those kids. And so this is one of the things that I was thinking about when I was building up teams. 

16:08
Speaker 1
Like I never participated in any sports because I couldn't get home after sports. And so how do we make it possible for students to be able to go to the tutoring after school and get home if you offer the extra school bus, that's expensive. All of a sudden you were doing after school tutoring probably in part because it's cheap and it's easy and you knew how to do it. But now it's expensive because you offer the transportation. And so that's one call out. But then even when you offer the transportation, there's students who have extracurriculars, there's students who have part time jobs that are at the same time as when you're offering the tutoring. Right? There's who have caregiving responsibilities. 

16:44
Speaker 1
This is such a common thing that we hear from our students that they have siblings that they are supposed to be watching after school. And so not only can they not go to your after school tutoring, but they're not even starting on their homework until late at night around town or 11 o' clock when their younger siblings have gone to bed, we hear this, I'd say like 50% of the students that upchieve users that I talk to tell me some version of that around why they have all these barriers and they're not starting on schoolwork until late at night in their homes. 

17:14
Speaker 1
And so that's, I would say one of the kind of my biggest calls around why the status quo of tutoring is so inequitable and how we in designing for low income students, like were able to get really focused by saying we're going to specifically design for low income students. How do we make a solution that will be really easy for them to use? So there's nothing standing in the way of them using it. 

17:34
Speaker 2
So I want to ask, like, how you're able to provide 24 7, I think I heard you say, tutoring, you know, from humans. And they connect in just a few minutes. That seems logistically like a nightmare. I want to give you like context why. I want to give you context why I'm asking this question. Because, you know, ruckus makers exist in these systems. And I think I shared on the intro call the point of view, but the elevator pitch is how do we reimagine the project of education within a traditional system? So we create campus experiences we're showing up for. And so that's the kind of person who wants to listen to the show. They have folks that want to protect the status quo and play it safe on their staff. Right. 

18:18
Speaker 2
And so when they come with what I would call their do school, different vision they get from staff, oh, that'll never work. Right. That's impossible. Right, Right. And here you are 24 7, connected in minutes, human tutors. You know, hopefully nobody on your team was like, ally, terrible idea. This will never work. But I'm just, I'm just curious, like, how did you sort of tackle a thorny problem like that? Because, you know, my ruckus makers don't have the same problem, but they have problems with the similar texture. 

18:52
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's such a great question. So first off, I will say that I've been working on upchieve full time for almost eight years now. I quit my job at JP Morgan to do this. So I've been doing it now for almost eight years. And absolutely the first few years, probably two to three years, I kept telling people that the vision was 247 tutoring in college counseling. It's available anytime. Both of students can use it. Even if it's midnight at home, they don't have anywhere else to turn. We're going to provide them with help. And everyone kept telling me, stop saying that. Don't say 24 7. You'll never be able to do it. And I can say that I redo it. Right. That average week time is including about 3am requests in calculus. 

19:34
Speaker 1
And in the early days, the secret to how it worked when were still like building up our force of tutors was that it was me. I was the secret. I would, I had it. I would get a phone call. I had, you know, we built the technology platform so that if a student requested help at 3am, I would get a phone call, I would wake up and I would go to my computer and I would tutor a student in calculus. And so I'm really glad to say I don't do that anymore. We have tens of thousands of tutors, but the real secret around how it works is that the tutors are actually volunteers. And we have, it's a global network of volunteers. They come from a wide range of backgrounds, high school students, all the way to working professionals to retired teachers. 

20:16
Speaker 1
We have a lot of retired teachers as well. So a huge range of different backgrounds and availabilities. And we do all the work to recruit, screen train, certify these tutors in every subject that they want to tutor in. And essentially we do all this work to make sure that they're the right people to be working with students. But essentially with that many volunteers, we've now reached the stage where we have enough people and we can provide that 24, 7 support. And because I had this strong conviction from day one that it was important that actually even if it was really hard and in fact some people were telling me it would be impossible that there was no other option that we'd had to be available 24, 7. 

20:57
Speaker 1
And so I'm really glad that I stuck to my guns on that and didn't listen to the people who tell me, no, don't do that. Because it's something that students really value about our platform and it makes it, you know, one of the things that is so important when you have a, you know, you're trying to, I think one of the big challenges with, you know, so the naysayers, right? So like if you were to try to partner with Upchi, there's going to be people on your staff who are going to say, oh, that's after school, students aren't going to use it. And that's a common like naysayer kind of reaction that we get is, oh, students won't use that. And I'll say that students use fche. They use it a lot. 

21:35
Speaker 1
And we've invested a lot into, you know, one of the ways we did it was with this 247 support. Like two minute wait time. Like, you know, those sort of things make it a lot easier because in the moment when a student wants help, that's such a huge moment, right? Like, oh my God, we Did the student is raising your hand and asking for help. It needs to be available right then and there. It needs to be really easy to get that help. So that's part one. But then we do all these other things in our partnerships with schools that have been, you know, to get. To make us successful in actually students, you know, deciding to use it even though it happens outside of school. There's another thing that everyone said, that's too hard. 

22:09
Speaker 1
You're never going to be able to get students to use it. And I said, well, first of all, there's all these reasons why we should want tutoring to happen outside of school. I can tell you more about that if you're curious. But again, just because something's hard doesn't mean it's not worth trying to do. 

22:22
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. And honestly, I mean, usually when it, when it's hard, those are the rewarding things to do, right? Like, absolutely. I don't know when I'm. When I'm coaching school leaders and they're. They're unpacking a challenge difficulty. 

22:34
Speaker 1
Why. 

22:34
Speaker 2
Why is it this way? Why is it happening? Like, you wouldn't want it easy, you know, if the job was easy, you'd be so bored and go find something that was hard. And then you'd say, well, why is it so hard? So the other thing just to really, I think, highlight for the Ruckus Maker, engaging with the show is do you. Do you have a vision? Do you have a. A future you're trying to create that is so attractive to you that you're willing to be woken up at 3am to be the tutor? Right? 

23:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. 

23:06
Speaker 2
And you had that. And then you. And all along you're figuring it out, but you were, you didn't stray from the vision. So I think that's just super cool modeling. You know, what we talk about on the show. So 2025 Riverside. Not a sponsor. So, you know, it's up to you, dear listener, if you want to use them or not. They're not paying me, but I love, I love it. It's really great for these shows, they do a rewind. Everybody does a rewind because you gotta be a copycat. Like Spotify. The word that was said the most, of course, in 2025 was AI. Right. And here's a really interesting. I don't know if it's a conflict or clash, but, like, right, you're choosing. I'm gonna do human tutoring, and there's AI stuff out there. And I just want to Invite you to maybe share. 

23:50
Speaker 2
Like, what do you see as the advantages of, like, human versus AI tutoring? 

23:55
Speaker 1
Absolutely. I can't get through a single call in 2025 or 2026 without somebody asking me about AI, so. Absolutely. And I'll say that, you know, we are a nonprofit, but we're a tech nonprofit that is really core to identity. You know, more than half of our team are product and engineering staff. Right. And so we're very, I think we're in general excited about technology, including AI and the way that we can use it to drive outcomes for students. We're certainly not like a. We're not anti AI. We use AI in lots of ways, actually, already in the product. One of the biggest, one of the most important ways is to keep students safe on the platform. And so there's lots of cool things that we use the technology for. 

24:36
Speaker 1
I will say that one area that I don't think is today the right application of AI is tutoring. So there's a bunch of reasons. I think one of the first ones that I'll call out is that when people talk about AI in the tutoring context, it's usually because they're thinking, oh, human tutoring is so impactful. There's all this research showing it works, but it's not scalable. We can't scale it to every student that needs it and would benefit from it. And part of it is maybe like a shortage of people. Part of it might be that the cost is too high. There's all these reasons why people think tutoring can't be scaled, human tutoring can't be scaled, but I believe that's actually incorrect. There are enough humans to provide tutoring to every student that needs it. 

25:21
Speaker 1
And that's exactly what upsheet is designed to do. We do believe that you can, one one, human tutoring to every law inclusive student in the country. And again, that's what our model is designed to do. And speaking about that big vision that you mentioned, the big vision for upchieve is to be serving millions of students every year. That is the goal with human tutors. We'll someday be serving millions of students every year. You can hold me to this prediction in a few years. Follow up with me, Danielle. We served twice as many students in 2025 as we did in 2024. We served 25,000 students last year. So we're already at like a, you know, a sizable scale. But that's just. We're just scratching the surface of where we want to go. And there are enough humans to provide human tutoring to every student. 

26:03
Speaker 1
And our model is so incredibly low cost because our tutors are volunteers. So the typical school that we, an average size school that we partner with, they'll pay about $10,000 a year to partner with upchieve. And that works out to about $14 a student. And so it's not nothing, right, but it's certainly within reach for I think, the vast majority of schools. And so that's kind of the first thing that's unfortunate about this. Like the hype around AI tutoring is it's based on a misconception that there aren't enough humans and that it can't, that human tutoring can't be scaled. But I believe that it can be. So that's the first thing. I think the second thing is that students today prefer humans. When presented with a choice between an AI tutor and a human tutorial, students overwhelmingly choose the human tutor. 

26:57
Speaker 1
And we know this because we did a research study, were funded by the Gates foundation to do a research study on this exact question. We worked with Microsoft Research to build a cutting edge AI tutor. And we put it in our product for a subset, a treatment group of students who had access to both the human tutor and the AI tutor. We watched what they did. It turned out that about less than 20% or less than 1 in 5 students were interested enough to even try sending a single message to this AI tutor. And then on top of that, of the students who had access to both over the course of the study period over. So it was about, it was 92, 93% of the sessions, the tutoring sessions that happened were human only tutoring sessions. 

27:37
Speaker 1
So not only did most students not even want to try it once, but then the majority of them that tried it didn't come back and use the AI tutor again. And so today, in 2025, 2026, students strongly prefer human tutors over AI tutors. So that's another good reason that we shouldn't be pushing AI tutoring on students. If we can provide human tutoring, we should because they prefer it. And think the final piece of this is just that human tutoring has this really strong base of research. Pretty much. I have never heard of a tutoring model that puts a human and a student together one one and lets them do a certain number of hours of tutoring if the hours of tutoring is high enough. That model always works. 

28:18
Speaker 1
Anytime that you have a one one pairing of a student and a tutor and they get enough hours of tutoring, it works. It improves learning outcomes. It always works. And so with AI tutoring, we actually have. Have almost no research showing its ability to drive those same outcomes. And I think there's a question. So, first of all, we need to do the research and, you know, I hope that Upchief will be kind of at the forefront of doing important research about AI versus human tutoring, because we're ready to switch. Like, we have no problem. It's not like from a. You know, like, if it, if everything checked out, students wanted it, the research was really positive, it was cheaper. 

28:53
Speaker 1
Like, if all those things were true, like, we don't have any skin in the game, we're happy to switch to offering AI tutoring to students. But essentially, there's a real question of whether AI tutoring will ever be as effective as human tutoring because of this piece around motivation and what it feels like to be working with a human and to have a human tell you, I'm rooting for you versus, you know, an AI chatbot say, I'm rooting for you. Those feel really different. And I think a lot of the impact of tutoring ultimately comes from that motivational effect of having a human there rooting for you and encouraging you to keep trying even when it's hard. So, yeah, I have questions. I'm not sure. 

29:35
Speaker 1
And I'm excited that hopefully we'll do the research and we won't just default to AI tutoring as the easy option because we think it'll be cheap or easier to scale. Like, students deserve the thing that works best. 

29:46
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's interesting. Or even me as a superintendent for my ego, I think I'm cool and innovative because I'm offering AI tutor, you know, versus but that's a real thing. I mean, power dynamics and ego and that kind of stuff. I'm sure you saw that at JP Morgan, but who knows? ODP Business Solutions, formerly Office Depot Business Solutions division, has been a trusted partner for schools for 30 years. At ODP Business Solutions, we're by your side to meet your evolving education needs. Let's talk about what keeps Ruckus makers up at night creating engaging learning spaces while juggling budget safety protocols and those endless supply lists. Here's the game changer. ODP Business Solutions helps you tackle it all. We're not just another vendor. We're your strategic partner in transformation. Want to turn a tired computer lab into a Steam innovation center? Will help design it. 

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Speaker 2
Districts reporting easier hiring are more likely to have professional growth that's structured and targeted to individual goals, so learning carries well beyond onboarding and supports ongoing improvement. Nearly half of districts that use software to manage and provide professional growth say hiring has gotten easier compared to 30% that don't use software. Download the full K12 lens report at frontlineducation.com leaders to see the data and the practices behind stronger culture and retention. You can get that [email protected] leaders teachers love the support that IXL provides in the classroom, and Ruckus makers love it all as well because IXL also gives school leaders meaningful insights on every level. Put your finger on the pulse of student performance with IXL and its dashboard to drill down to see progress and growth for individual students. 

33:04
Speaker 2
You can even customize reports to hone in on the information that matters most to you. IXL helps Ruckus makers make data informed decisions that will benefit their students. Growth goals get started [email protected] leader. That's ixl.com leaders here's something I tell all principals I work with. There's two sides to every coin. The story you've been telling yourself about your campus. Our parents don't engage our teachers. They just won't change. This is just how it is here. That's not necessarily reality. It's just one side of the coin that's a story you decided to be true. But there's another side to that story and to that coin that is equally valid. One that probably positions everything you're saying in a much more generous light. The language and the story you're telling yourself. It really matters. 

34:08
Speaker 2
It's the same situation, but depending on the lens and the perspective you take, you are a completely different leader. That's one move that Digital Danny is built for to make with you, he's not going to agree with your comfortable story. He's going to push on you. Right. In the way that I would. With the same questions drawn from 10 plus years of experience coaching school leaders just like you. That reframes the entire game. It could be a game changer for you. Get started with digital Danny and reframe the story you've been telling [email protected] Ruckus get started at myprincipalcoach.com ruckus. If you put like on your empathy shoes. Right. And walk a mile in these kids experience. If I'm reaching out to a tutor at midnight at 3am I could see why I would. I would much rather talk to a human. Right. 

35:13
Speaker 1
Right. Things aren't going well if it's 3:00am Right. And you're. 

35:17
Speaker 2
Yeah. If you don't have a human that you can ask right at home. Yeah. For whatever reason, I'm not gonna, I'm not judging it. But I could see that human piece. Right. Would be so important. Is there any other insights you think you have? I mean you shared the data like okay, it's clear that the students like the humans over AI for tutoring, but any other insights on why? 

35:42
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean I think that there's definitely still a big trust issue that students and educators. Right. And everybody has with AI because it's an incredible technology, but it's still not at the level that, you know, it's not reliable yet. Right. It's still not there. And that will change quickly. And that I think will lead to the increase in trust. And so we'll see that students will be willing to try it more because they'll have had more positive experiences of it working. Right. And so I do think that the interest level from students will change over time. I think it's really just a question of until students value the human and AI perspective equally, I don't know if it'll have the same impact. I like to use the example of. 

36:26
Speaker 1
On a personal note, I know it's super important to go to the gym and exercise but. But I have a personal trainer because I can't get my butt to the gym and work hard unless like there is a person there telling me to do it. And it's just way too easy to like to skim, to do one less rep or whatever it is. Right. And so I do think that's kind of. For me, the example is I need the human there and I Am an incredibly like agentic individual. Right. Like, I'm pretty, like, you know, I'm pretty on top of my life. Like I, I have a pretty strong understanding of why it's really important for me to do exercise all these things. 

37:02
Speaker 1
And I still, without a human there telling me to do it and we're holding my hand while I do it, I can't get myself to do it. And so it's, you know, maybe the students of the future will be that much better than me that they can, you know, they'll be able to make themselves do things they don't want to do without a human in the loop. But that's what I think about a lot. Yeah. 

37:22
Speaker 2
Yeah. Probably not. They'll need that. They'll need that human. We all do. Cool. I think we covered a lot about upchieve and so 25,000 to millions, you know, that's the vision of support. How do, how do schools sort of like sign up to partner with you and that, what's that process like? 

37:40
Speaker 1
Yeah, for sure. So I think the first thing is that, you know, if your school that is doing after school tutoring right now definitely want one of the takeaways to be that I think working with something, it doesn't have to be up to you. There may be other options out there. But I think working with a 247 tutoring organization that specifically drives high usage and will hold themselves accountable to that's a clear upgrade over your after school tutoring program. Because any drop in format, whether it's in the morning or after school, where students kind of just can drop in, it's not equitable enough. I don't believe those models are really delivering on equity. And then I actually think that the cost is comparable at least. Again, speaking to Upchieve, we're not actually. It's not high. It's extremely low cost. 

38:22
Speaker 1
What we're seeing, especially when you look at the usage side, is for after school tutoring. Every principal that I talk to says like, well, not that many kids actually show up. Right. The attendance isn't what I want it to be. And so we're seeing that our usage is pretty high. We're getting at our partner schools, we're getting over a third of students to use us regularly. And you know, that's working out to a cost of about 50 cents per tutoring session. That is how much schools are ultimately paying to give their students a tutoring session. So I truly believe in what we're doing and that it's worth it. For schools. Again, we're a nonprofit. The point isn't for us to make money, it's to drive impact for students. 

39:03
Speaker 1
We track our success based on how many students did we help succeed academically, how many did we get to college? And so, you know, that's what I'm measuring myself and holding myself accountable to. But yeah, so that's the first thing for schools is like you don't have a program besides your after school tutoring program or teacher led program that's kind of more drop in. Definitely worth a conversation. And worst case scenario, I'll tell you more about the stuff that we do for free because we do a lot of stuff for free. We're a nonprofit. So there's no, like, no reason not to. And then, you know, we also work with districts, we work with CMOs like, and we're really, we work with other nonprofits. 

39:39
Speaker 1
Essentially for us, the goal is to make sure that every low income student in the country knows that they can access free tutoring and college counseling on upchieve24. 7. And you don't have to partner with us for us to want your students to know about us and to use us. Right. It's just that our partnership that we do with schools helps the school's partners be more successful in getting students to use it. We're doing things like sending a partnership manager in person to your schools and we have them go ideally class by class and present to your students about Upchieve. And so we have developed this set of things that we do around implementation that help drive high student usage even though it happens outside of the school day. 

40:18
Speaker 2
Yeah. Incredible outcomes. So upchieve.org I believe the website. So yeah, check that out. And now I'd love to ask you the questions I asked all my guests at the end. So let's do it. Allie, if you could put one message on all school marquees around the world for a single day, what would your message be? 

40:35
Speaker 1
I think this might be the first time you've gotten this one, but you'll have to tell me. My message would be. It's in Chinese, so you're not hearing crazy things when I say this. 

40:43
Speaker 2
Okay, then this is the first then. 

40:46
Speaker 1
Okay, so this is what I want to put on the marquee. I wanted to say jiayou, which means essentially in Chinese. The literal translation is add oil. And I know that sounds really weird, but it's actually, it's a general phrase that really is an encouraging phrase. Essentially means something along the lines of like, you've got this keep going. And you know, it's. I like the, like, the add oil is like a cute, like, trans. Literal translation. But it is to me, like, probably like a personal motto at this point. You know, that's something that the first time. So I studied abroad in China. I do speak Chinese. And like, from the first time I heard it was such a. Like, it captured so much of how I've tried to live my life, you know, like, the persistence through things that are hard. 

41:28
Speaker 1
And so at this point, kind of like a personal model. And I mean, who doesn't need to hear that sometimes, right? Who doesn't need to hear, you've got this keep going? And so that's what I would put on all of them across the country. But I also like that it's in a foreign language. Right. I hope that people be like, what, I've ever seen Chinese on the marquee before? So let me go look it up. It's easy to translate things nowadays. And so I hope that would be kind of a inspiring message for students, for educators, for anybody who's reading that to hear, you've got this. Keep going. 

42:00
Speaker 2
Certainly an original answer for sure. Thank you for sharing that. If you're building your dream school, right, you weren't constrained in terms of resources. Your only limitation was your ability to imagine what would be the three guiding principles of Ali's dream school. 

42:15
Speaker 1
All right, Number one is agency. So student agency in particular. I really believe in trusting students to make good choices when equipped with information, at least most of the time. Right. And I think that means that, you know, in general with students, I'll say that my dream school is a high school. So we can put all of this into the context of a high school. But at least for me, I really try to be transparent with students as much as possible about everything. And so that includes the fact that some things are not fun and certainly are not as fun as, you know, playing Fortnite or hanging out with your friends. Right? But that doesn't mean that they're not worth doing. In fact, you Things can be not fun, but still worth doing. 

42:59
Speaker 1
And then same thing, that some things are hard to learn but still worth learning. Right. And so, like, kind of being upfront around, like, yes, like this thing that, like, yes, to get a good grade on this test, you have to, you know, study this much or you have to do this or that. And like, but these are, like, you know, being clear about, like, why it's important, why the thing I'm Asking you to do that is not always going to be fun. Because I think that while we should try to make learning fun, that there's only so much we can do. Right? Right. Some things just are never going to be fun. I do believe that. But I'd like to believe that students, when equipped with the information, can make good decisions, at least the vast majority of the time. 

43:35
Speaker 1
And you see that in us being really sticking to our guns around wanting to build something that students want to use. A lot of tutoring programs, they have gone during the school day, but for us. And yes, that's a way to get the dosage required to have high impact, but I want to build something that students want to use even if it's hard. So that's kind of the first thing, a student agency, trusting students, being upfront and transparent with students. The second principle that my school would be based on is economic mobility. And this is about the standard that I want to hold my school to. I want every graduate of my school to be making a living wage salary within a certain number of years of graduation. Right. 

44:18
Speaker 1
And so every decision that we make would ideally be tied to how do we increase the expected lifetime earnings of our students, how do we set them up for the best possible life after school. And you know, academic preparedness and like test scores in particular are just one piece of the puzzle of how we do that. They definitely matter. But you know, they matter insofar as they help us set students up for successful lives. And students also need a lot of other things to be successful in life. Right. They need to know about high paying careers. They need to see themselves as the kind of student that could succeed in those careers. And so if student at my school passed the state task, but they didn't see themselves as a student who was good at school, that would still be a failure. 

45:02
Speaker 1
And I think going back to like, you know, transparency or agency is the first value. Like, we need to be clear with students that this is the point of what we're doing too. Because that I think is incredibly empowering. Every student that I've talked to and asked them like, what does success in life look like to you? Every student, every low income student that I've talked to has told me some version of I want to have a job that I like, that pays well, I want to be able to support my family. Right. It all comes down to this. Economic well being is really on the minds of most low income high school students. And so by connecting the things that we ask them to do in School to the life outcome that they actually care about most. 

45:40
Speaker 1
I think that will be a lot more successful. And then final thing related to, sorry, you might not have been expecting these to be too long, but I thought about them maybe a little too long. So I'll just come clean. Lead into economic mobility is I think about this with my own staff. I run a nonprofit, and nonprofits are known for having way too low salaries or, you know, there's low salaries in general. But similarly, schools and teachers pay. Right. How can I, as a leader claim to care about students upward mobility if my staff are not making living wage salaries? And I don't have solutions like, I'm not in North America. I figured it out. 

46:15
Speaker 1
I haven't tried to build a school yet, but I do think that this would be on my mind is like, how do I, like, I got to live that value? Like, am I making it possible for everyone that works at my school to earn a living wage and how do I do that? Okay, that was only the second principle. I'm sorry. The last one, I'll be quick. Is what I'll just call the dio mentality. This go for it mentality. Really wanting my school to be an encouraging environment where students feel that like we believe in their potential. Right. And we, you know, we're encouraging their. 

46:46
Speaker 2
Pat. 

46:46
Speaker 1
Their passions. It's also like a place where they, we do that for them, but they ideally do that for their peers as well. They support their peers, they celebrate their peers success. And I think that this, you know, goes back to that phrase, like, I'm rooting for you. I once had a call with a student and I asked them, do you remember, you know, or like, was, do you have a favorite tutor? Like, do you remember a favorite tutor that you've worked with on Upchieve? And she said, absolutely. Right away she remembered. She said, yes, favorite tutor was this person. And my favorite tutor was this person because they were the first person in my life to say the words I'm rooting for you. And it stuck in their mind so much because of those words. Right. 

47:27
Speaker 1
And so that is how I want a student to feel is like everybody at our school is rooting for them. And so that would be my third principle. 

47:35
Speaker 2
Yeah, I love that last piece too. You know, I think there's research we talk a lot about, like, does every kid have at least one caring adult? But what if you had a whole building of adults just rooting for every kid? That's, that's really of inspiring vision, you know, to build towards. So cool. Well, we covered a lot of ground on this episode. So Ali, of everything we discussed, you can only have one what's the one thing you want a Ruckus Maker to remember? 

48:01
Speaker 1
Oh my gosh, I hope you remember everything. 

48:04
Speaker 2
But. 

48:06
Speaker 1
I think that it's I believe that schools and districts should strive to provide to ensure that all of their students can get help when they need it. Not just their lowest achieving students, not just during the school day. They should strive to provide that access, support anytime that students need it. And also that I believe schools can afford it. This isn't a crazy. This is not something, it's not unachievable. I'm not asking you to do the impossible. I believe that it is possible and it doesn't have to be up to you. But there are ways to do this and it's worth doing. So I'm asking schools to broaden their thoughts around what is tutoring, what outcomes can it help their students achieve and how do they provide that for all of their students? 

48:52
Speaker 2
Hey Ruckus Maker, thanks again for pressing play. I hope you enjoyed this show as much as I enjoyed recording it. And before you go, if today's episode shifted something for you where you want to do school different or you have a new idea about education, then I want to invite you to subscribe to ruckusmakers News. That's our newsletter and you get three new opportunities to do school different every week sent to your inbox. It's trusted by over 5,000 school leaders. And if you want to reimagine education within a traditional setting so that you could create a campus experience worth showing up for, subscribe for [email protected] news.