More than homework help.
Better results. A better future.
As one of the country's few tutoring nonprofits, Aspire has been empowering students to make dramatic improvements for almost 20 years.
We partner with families, schools, and community organizations with an approach built on the following three pillars:
1. Students First
In everything we do, our top priority is to empower our students to grow in confidence, competence, and grit. We make every decision and measure every outcome based on how well it prepares our students for college, career, and a life of learning.
2. Continuous Learning
Education doesn’t stop with our students. As an organization, we seek out feedback from a diverse range of sources and take informed risks to improve our impact towards educational equity.
3. Fighting For Equity
Aspire exists to fight for educational equity alongside our partners and community leaders. We are dedicated to interrupting patterns of inequity in our community, with the shared vision that all young people should have the opportunity for equally high outcomes without regard to where they start in life.
Success is contagious
Eighty-five percent of career success is driven by soft skills. Every one of our students is also invited to be a part of something special:
Every summer, we train over 200 of our students in social-emotional skills and pair them each with a younger student to mentor in literacy. Through Community Reading Buddies our older students are equipped to be independent, active adults, and help fight the literacy gap for younger students.
Aspire's 10-year Vision
Our vision is that every Bay Area student will have an educational mentor. No Bay Area student will be held back for lack of educational mentorship.
Aspire By the Numbers
Parent Perspective: 5th Grade Student
Both tutors my daughter saw were amazing. They were very different but both connected well with her. Jennifer was so calm it helped my daughter with the ISEE prep so she did well on the ISEE. And our second tutor challenged her to think for herself; her report card went from 3 to 4 in math.
Teacher Perspective: Community Reading Buddies
During the time spent with the Reading Buddies program our children were more engaged with literacy and now seem to spend more time in our library.
Parent Perspective: Test Prep Tutoring
Both of my children were preparing for the ACT as seniors and I was late looking for tutors to help them. Within about 6 weeks the Aspire tutor was able to help them improve their scores by 25%. I highly recommend Aspire for any youth studying for their ACT or SAT!
Mentor Perspective: Community Reading Buddies
My buddy started off very shy, he didn't seem to have a lot of interest in reading, he was mostly letting me do the reading for him. But as time went on he started to pick his own books, read more, read himself more rather than having me do all the reading, and he seemed to have a lot more passion about reading.
Tutor Perspective: High School
From the beginning, it was clear that Joseph’s reluctance to work stemmed from insecurity, not insolence. He had the capacity to succeed, he’d just never had the time or support to absorb these concepts at his own pace. Not only was I able to give him this time and support, I’ve also been able to fortify his confidence as we’ve worked together over the past couple of months.
Buddy Perspective: What do you like about your reading buddies?
My two reading buddies are the best reading buddies and they're like sisters to me and they treat me very well.
Success Story: From Parent to Sponsor
Katherine started with Aspire as a parent of two students at Head Royce School. After realizing the quality of our tutoring services, she began recommending us to other parents in her network and later decided to sponsor OUSD students for individual tutoring. Her contribution has ensured that more students of all backgrounds access the support they need to succeed.