Our Story
The First 15 Years
“Before Aspire, I was lost in my high school career. Aspire gave me the belief to push forward. Working with them has been a privilege and an unforgettable experience.”
- Dain, now a student at UCLA
Aspire Education is the Bay Area’s leader in effective supplemental education programming. For more than 15 years, we have promised - and delivered - real results to over 18,000 students by connecting them to a small community of educators and mentors stocked with content expertise and emotional intelligence. Our top priority is to empower students to grow in confidence, competence, and grit. We are driven by the conviction that although potential is equally distributed across lines of race and class, opportunity is not. Aspire is 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.
Aspire has three main service offerings:
- Collaborative Education Programming and Support. Aspire has partnered with dozens of Bay Area organizations to design custom programs that empower students to reach greater results in college entrance exams or increase confidence and achievement levels in subjects in which they’ve struggled. While many of our programs typically deal with the SAT, ACT, or high school entrance exams, our specialists provide academic support in all subjects.
- One-on-One Tutoring. Through a team of tutors stocked with content expertise and emotional intelligence, Aspire provides high-quality academic assistance with individual students and families on a sliding scale fee basis. Aspire’s approach to tutoring as educational mentorship not only leads to greater confidence and improved grades, but also empowers our students to be better prepared for the next phase of their educational careers.
- Community Reading Buddies. Community Reading Buddies mobilizes Bay Area young adults to mentor younger students in literacy and ignite them with a passion for reading. In turn, the young adults are trained in social-emotional skills that prepare them to become successful, independent community members.
The Next 15 Years
Transforming the life of an individual student is an achievable goal. So is transforming the trajectory of communities through the shared fight for educational equity. Through flipping what’s typically a for-profit company into an engine of equity and building a community of people investing in the future of Bay Area children as a whole, Aspire has now reached a critical benchmark:
For every hour of tutoring, we provide a full hour to an underserved student.
We’re able to do that through the generosity of our partners and the commitment of our volunteers. Every year, we train and develop more and more tutors to be part of that effort. More than that, our Community Reading Buddies program equips high school students with the social-emotional skills they need to succeed and simultaneously closes the literacy gap that exists for tens of thousands of local students. But now there are also ways that you can get involved.
Our Core Values
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.
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.
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.