Homework Helper program

The COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been large. Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math, primarily during the 2020-21 school year. It’s been long-documented that time away from regular classroom interaction leads to declines in student performance, a dynamic often studied as “summer learning loss.” With COVID-19 forcing high schools to close and abruptly shift to online instruction, students are expected to suffer a “pandemic learning loss,” especially in STEM learning. And as with summer learning loss, those repercussions are expected to fall disproportionately on poor, minority, and underserved students, exacerbating existing inequalities in new and serious ways. Left unchecked, the COVID-19 pandemic may narrow the STEM pipeline to only those students whose families have the resources to easily access e-learning opportunities (The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that STEM-related jobs will grow by 8% from 2019-2029, effectively doubling all other occupations. Books Education Learning and Life (BELL Organization) in collaboration with the President of the Tenant Association Ms. Jean Hill from Tracey Towers 40 W Mosholu Parkway Bronx, New York 10468 will facilitate a targeted intensive tutoring program titled Homework Helper program for the upcoming 2026-27 academic school year. Homework Helper is a tutoring intervention covering elementary, middle school and high school experiencing unfinished learning in subjects such as math. The students will be divided into groups of 2-3 for 2 hours a day, twice a week (Friday & Saturday). These sessions will be held biweekly throughout the school year. Sessions will include but not limited homework help, practice problems and take homework all helping to reinforce what was taught and learnt. These sessions do not replace but supplement students’ core math classes.

The Department of Education in NYC was forced to implement remote learning in the spring of 2020, with children experiencing a mixture of in-person, hybrid, and remote instructional models throughout the last two school years. Due to this, many students may have significant unfinished learning, especially those disproportionately affected by the pandemic - such as low-income students and Black and Latino students. Typically, students may experience five to nine months of unfinished instruction, but students of color are more likely to experience six to twelve months of unfinished instruction, which consists of material that should have been introduced to students, but has not yet been mastered. Research shows targeted intensive tutoring can help historically underserved students to catch-up to meet high standards. Targeted intensive tutoring, often referred to as high-dosage tutoring, consists of having the same tutor to work over an extended period of time (e.g., all year, every school day) on academic skills, such as math or reading. In the most effective versions, an individual tutor works with one or two students at a time, using a skill-building curriculum closely aligned with the math or reading curriculum used throughout the school and targeted to the student’s academic needs.

Youth (under 24)

Limited English Speakers

Immigrants / Migrants