We choose to partner with others to better understand their experiences, develop new knowledge, and share insights with decision makers to inform policy and practice.
We partner with school districts, charter management organizations, early childhood providers, and other direct providers of P-12 education to learn about their needs & priorities, share relevant research from the field, study the efficacy of interventions, and understand effective implementation approaches.
We partner with states to understand the impact of policies and programs implemented at the state level. We also provide strategic advising to states implementing research-backed policies.
We partner with nonprofit organizations working to support the improvement of educations locally, within a state or region, or nationally to provide support and tools for implementation as well as collaborating on research.
We partner with other research institutions, research practice partnerships and individual researchers to collaborate on research projects, especially when the partnership can provide relevant knowledge of the geographic region or strategy at the center of the research.
We work with both nonprofit and for profit organizations that provide services to educational agencies to learn about what makes products effective and easy to implement in schools.
Examples of projects in partnership
The NSSA has been extremely valuable in shaping our tutoring programs. Its tools, especially the student surveys, have provided vital insights. These tools allow us to capture student voices and make data-driven improvements tailored to their needs, ultimately enabling us to focus on continuous improvement.
LaToya Blackshear, Director of Planning and Evaluation, Jackson Public Schools 
Scaling our statewide high-impact tutoring model would not have been possible without the NSSA’s quality research and partnership. Not only do we reference NSSA research and tools when making decisions, but we also consult with them regularly to learn how to best implement high-impact tutoring in Illinois.
Christy Borders, Executive Director, Illinois Tutoring Initiative 
We worked with Stanford and our school partners to create and implement a research project that would show us what we’re doing right, what we could do better, and which of our approaches were working best. Through this research we were able to answer program design questions and show the field that online tutoring for young students can be effective.
Mindy Sjoblom, Founder and CEO, OnYourMark Tutoring
Partnership Project Examples
SCALE project NSSA and Stanford computer science researchers worked with tutoring provider FEV and a Texas school district to develop an AI “Tutor Co-Pilot” that provides recommendations to tutors when a student gets an answer incorrect. Students were 10 percent more likely to progress through math tutoring session assessments successfully when the AI tool was used by tutors. Similar to other studies on tutoring, this approach particularly benefited students who started with low- and mid-level achievement. FEV is able to sharpen the skills of novice tutors using this tool and the students and school district benefited from improved instruction. This study offered a promising example to the field of how the combination of AI and human insights can help human tutors—and novice educators more generally —improve educational outcomes.
NSSA researchers and partnership staff worked with the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) in DC to design and implement an analysis of their high-impact tutoring program. By identifying the available data and research questions most important to OSSE, NSSA was able to provide insights that are informing their program. For example, NSSA was able to show the connection between days students’ were scheduled for tutoring and higher school attendance, most prominently for students who had been absent over 30% of the prior school year. This finding had implications for the guidance OSSE gave local education agencies in DC about selecting students for tutoring.
NSSA works with the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS) to share tools and resources about high-impact tutoring. Through this partnership, NSSA provides technical support for districts, states, and higher education institutions that reach out to NPSS seeking assistance on high-impact tutoring. In addition, NPSS shares NSSA tools including the District Playbook for High Impact Tutoring and the Toolkit for Tutoring Programs.
NSSA partnered with OnYourMark Tutoring to conduct research on the size of tutoring groups and the effectiveness of online tutoring for students learning to read. OnYourMark and their charter management organization partner wanted to understand the impact of tutoring online with a live tutor rather than in person and the impact of tutoring in pairs versus one-on-one. The findings from this research showed that online tutoring can be effective and was more effective one-on-one. These positive findings from a virtual program with young readers provides initial evidence that virtual tutoring is a promising option, especially in contexts with barriers to implementing in-person early literacy tutoring.
SCALE founder Professor Susanna Loeb worked with Professor Patricia Burch and researcher Alvin Makori from the University of Southern California to examine the school-level facilitators and barriers to scaling high-impact tutoring. Partnering with an urban traditional school district and an urban charter management organization, they collected survey and interview data from teachers and administrators to identify scaling challenges. Major barriers to scaling included time and space constraints, tutor supply and quality, updated data systems, and school level costs, while a key facilitator was teacher buy-in.
Existing School District, Charter Management, and State Partners
