Students at Perry Walker High School in New Orleans Succeed with Grade Results’ Online Tutoring

Carrollton, Texas – June 30, 2009 — Over ninety percent of students at the O. Perry Walker charter school in New Orleans who received Grade Results’ one-to-one online tutoring passed the Louisiana state tests in Mathematics, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies.

O. Perry Walker College and Career Preparatory High School had long suffered from stagnant test results and low school performance scores. Walker educates a traditionally underserved population that is ninety-seven percent African-American. Previously, less than a third of their students were deemed proficient in English, and only forty-three percent were proficient in math.

In 2009, Walker contracted with Grade Results for its curriculum that is aligned with Louisiana state standards, and to do online instruction for students during a part of the school day designed for preparing the Graduate Exit Exam (GEE). The GEE is a statewide test administered to 10th-12th grade high school students that they must pass to graduate. The ninety-seven students received one-to-one, live online instruction in Math, Language Arts, Science and/or Social Studies for four days per week for approximately three months leading up to the GEE.

The students then took the GEE, and nearly all the students who received the Grade Results live, online instruction passed the GEE.

The Assistant Principal of O. Perry Walker, Mark Bailey, said, “Our students have benefitted from our relationship with Grade Results. The responsiveness of the organization, the effectiveness of the online tutors, and their commitment to student achievement played an integral part in our academic success. Grade Results remains a critical element of our instructional strategy as we look to build on this year’s improvement.”

“We’re delighted with the results of the statewide tests,” said Suzanne McElyea, CEO of Grade Results, Inc. “The school administration, their teachers, and their students did a remarkable job, and we’re happy to have played a role in their success.”

The results of students receiving the Grade Results’ tutoring helped drive the overall results of the school. Last year, less than a third of students were deemed proficient in English. This year, nearly half of students who took the test were. But the biggest changes came about in math, where 85 percent of students scored at proficient levels, compared with only 43 percent last year.

According an article in The Times-Picayune, “… the bounce at Walker stood out, both for its sheer size and the fact it occurred among high school students, whose test scores are usually considered harder to improve than those of students in younger grades.”

For more information, download the complete press release at http://www.graderesults.com/pdf/Louisianastatetests.pdf 

Every home-work help session in on-line tutoring is like a soccer game, where tutors are goal keepers. The soccer ball could come from anywhere and at any moment. The goal keeper should be ready to react to different situations. Similarly, a tutor may not know anything in advance about the question that’s going to be posed in a session, nor the nature or knowledge of the student. He/she may have to start tutoring from the scratch for a high school student. Here’s one such chemistry session that I did a while ago:

It was a high-school student so I had to teach some high-school topic to that student. I started the session by pushing a picture of the periodic table on the white board. After that, I asked, “What do you see on the board?”. “ crossword puzzle table.. lol I don’t know. but similar stuff is over there in my science lab,” said the student. Fortunately, the student was aware of some terms like elements and compounds, which I found out later on during the session. I used a house as an example and explained how different things are arranged in different rooms of the house like the entrance hall, kitchen, bed room, etc. I correlated the things of in a house with elements and rooms with periods and groups, and the student finally understood the periodic table. The satisfaction that I got at the end of the session was enormous. This is why I like tutoring and strive to improve my tutoring skills- Wilson, Grade Results, Inc

I am a tutor, working at Grade Results. It is a great experience tutoring students from all over the world. We concentrate on only one student at a time and it helps us to identify the weak areas of the students exactly and provide our help accordingly. The animations and the static images used to explain the concepts make both learning and teaching interesting. This is not possible in the case of classroom teaching. The students feel free to ask any question about the topic and get support. The students are benefiting from our service. I really enjoy tutoring!

We all know the value of education. As Martin Luther King Jr. said “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.  Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.”  Grade Results  provides true education. The aim of GR is to improve the student’s performance by one to one tutoring. Grade Results provides online tutoring, writing services, and homework help that help students to succeed in their exams. Most of the students are interested in online tutoring after experiencing our services. I’ve had many fine students while tutoring. I am very proud to be an instructor - Janet from Grade Results, Inc.

Leading Online Instructional Service Launches New Program for Students in Grades 3 - 12

Carrollton, TX, December 8, 2008 - GRADE RESULTS, Inc.(www.graderesults.com) a market leader in providing online instruction and academic support to students, has announced the launch of an innovative new program for the Recovery School District of New Orleans, Louisiana.  Students in grades 3 through 12 will be able to access a special, live, online instructional service in school and at home for math, science and language arts. The goal of the project is to lower the dropout rate, improve student scores on the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program, known as LEAP, and raise overall student achievement.

It will offer a small group environment for students who will work with a live, online instructor in a rich, interactive environment, viewing animations, asking questions, and taking assessments.  Alternatively, students can also email their questions to the online instructors, who will answer their questions and provide additional learning materials.

“We are always looking for innovative programs to help all of our students, not just a select few,” said Paul Vallas, Superintendent of the Recovery District.  “Grade Results enables us to extend the learning experience beyond the classroom, and using small group instruction online means we can do it in a very cost effective manner.”

Approximately 4,000 RSD students will be able to access the program at school or from home.

“Our instructors will work with small groups of students online, reviewing the material they were presented earlier that day in class,” said Suzanne McElyea, President of Grade Results, Inc.  “By integrating our instruction with the district’s, and by providing immediate reinforcement of that day’s lesson, we can help students get ahead of the curve.”

School administrators, teachers, and parents will have the ability to monitor and assess each tutoring session. Grade Results will offer the program during the school day and at home, Monday through Thursday.  The service is supported by the company’s instructors, all of whom have graduate degrees in their subject area and years of experience teaching.

Additional program details can be found at www.graderesults.com.

For more information, visit www.graderesults.com, or call 800-928-5570.

About GRADE RESULTS: GRADE RESULTS, based in Carrollton, Texas, is a leader in providing online instruction, tutoring, academic support, and test preparation to students around the country. School districts, colleges, universities, and textbook publishers and companies partner with GRADE RESULTS to improve learning outcomes, one student at a time. GRADE RESULTS connects students and instructors for assistance in math, science, language arts, reading, and English language learning any time, anywhere they have a computer and an Internet connection. GRADE RESULTS currently works with students throughout the country.  For more information, visit www.graderesults.com.

Hi!
I’m Ross working at Grade Results www.graderesults.com . I love online teaching since it enables me to share my knowledge with students.

I would like to share my experience with a spectacular student, Donald. He was my regular student. He liked the way I explained the concepts with real life examples. He said “Hey man. you are the best tutor, can I get you every session?”. Next time he connected with other tutor and asked  “Where is Ross?”. I was surprised and helped him. He enjoyed tutoring and learned very well. I really want to thank Grade Results for giving me the satisfaction of teaching. Thank you!

Leading Online Tutoring Service Announces Partnership with the National Association of Black School Educators to Improve Educational Outcomes of Minority Students.

Carrollton, TX, November 19, 2008 - GRADE RESULTS, Inc.(www.graderesults.com) a market leader in providing online tutoring and academic support to students, has announced a partnership with the National Association of Black School Educators or NABSE (www.nabse.org ) to improve the academic performance of minority students. NABSE has over 400 members who lead major school districts around the country.

“Grade Results is the best of breed online tutoring company that’s focused on customizing their experience to match the needs of individual students and individual districts. Their prescriptive, differentiated, and customized approach to education is exactly what’s needed to serve not just minority students, but all students,” said Quentin R. Lawson, Executive Director of NABSE.

“Many students are starved for teacher attention and truly individualized instruction, but teachers usually don’t have the time to give it them,” said Suzanne McElyea, President of Grade Results, Inc. “Our partnership with NABSE promises to bring all the attention and focus of one-to-one tutoring to thousands of students across the country who truly need it.”

Grade Results offers its online tutoring service 24/7. Grade Results (www.graderesults.com ) provides one-to-one online prescriptive tutoring to students in grades 2-16. Their tutors work with customized state correlated content in a rich multimedia environment that engages students while developing their conceptual understanding. The instruction is specifically designed for each individual student aligned with state learning outcomes. Grade Results provides this individualized instruction in an environment that is secure, student-paced, and enormously empowering to the learner.

The Grade Results teaching environment integrates instant messaging with a whiteboard, Microsoft Office Files, graphics, audio, video and interactive, all tied to a Course Management System. The environment enables student and tutor to explain complicated concepts, ask questions, and generate actionable data on student performance. All the sessions are archived for later review.

The service is supported by the company’s tutors, all of whom have graduate degrees in their subject area and years of experience teaching.

For more information, visit www.graderesults.com, or call 800-928-5570.

About GRADE RESULTS:
GRADE RESULTS, based in Carrollton, Texas, is a leader in providing online tutoring, academic support, and test preparation to students around the country. School districts, colleges, universities, and textbook publishers and companies partner with GRADE RESULTS to improve learning outcomes, one student at a time. GRADE RESULTS connects students and tutors for assistance in math, science, language arts, reading, and English language learning anytime, anywhere they have a computer and an internet connection. GRADE RESULTS currently works with students throughout the country. For more information, visit www.graderesults.com.

About NABSE

The National Alliance of Black School Educators (NABSE) is the nation’s premiere non-profit organization devoted to furthering the academic success for the nation’s children - particularly children of African descent. Now in its 36th year, NABSE boasts an outreach to more than 10,000 preeminent educators including teachers, administrators, superintendents as well as corporate and institutional members. Founded in 1970, by Dr. Charles D. Moody, Sr., NABSE is dedicated to improving both the educational experiences and accomplishments of African American youth through the development and use of instructional and motivational methods that increase levels of inspiration, attendance and overall achievement.

I’m Victor, an online math tutor working in Grade Results. I also have experience in classroom teaching, but I found online tutoring more effective than classroom teaching. Apart from the school timings, the students can prefer learning online for the following reasons.

Since it is one-to-one tutoring system, the tutor can correct the student then and there. The students are free to pose their questions without any fear of embarrassment from other students. The students can login from anywhere and anytime to get help from the tutors. The animations and the teaching methodologies make the learning easy and interesting. And the students can easily remember the concepts when it is taught with animations (as we all know that pictorial representations are usually better).

So it’s a fantastic way for students to learn and have some fun.

This is Allen. I’m working at Grade Results since June, 2007. It has been a great experience working as an on-line science tutor for students across the world.

A few months back, I handled a session in which the student was not so enthusiastic and showed little interest to learn the subject. The session was about the epidermal tissue. After explaining the definition and the types of epidermal tissues, I could observe the great increase in student’s interest and the interaction level. As the session progressed, when I uploaded a few illustrative images for the types of epidermal tissues from our image bank, the student was so happy and said, “I understand it well. Thank you so much.  Will you be my tutor for the next time also?” I said “You’re welcome. Yes, I will be your tutor for the next time too.”

Likewise, I have an experience of handling many students from time to time at Grade Results, which provides one-to-one online tutoring for NCLB and other Title I K-12 instruction.  Hence, at the end of the day, it gives me an immense pleasure to impart knowledge to students every day.

I am Sammy, working in Grade Results, Inc as an online math tutor. I just want to share my tutoring experience with you. It has been a wonderful task to tutor challenging students. One of my students was only interested in drawing during the session. So I explained the concept of “equivalence relation” with images of dancing dolls and other animations on the whiteboard. This really motivated the student to learn the concept in depth. At the end of the session, I asked a few questions to check his understanding. In the end, the student thanked me for doing such a good session.