Twenty-seven hours. That's the total amount of tutoring time behind the results in this post: two 40-minute sessions a week, 20 sessions a semester, across two semesters.

It's a small number, less time than a student spends in a math classroom in a single month. That frames everything below: this is what happened when ten students at a small homeschool co-op in California got a modest, consistent dose of targeted math support alongside their regular instruction.

The School and the Students

Imperial Valley Homeschool Academy is a homeschool cooperative serving families across California's Imperial Valley. In 2025-26, ten of their students in grades 5 through 8 enrolled in TurtlEd math tutoring, all identified as performing below grade level in math at the start. 

The Program

• 2 sessions per week, 40 minutes each
• 20 sessions per semester, across 2 semesters
• 40 total sessions, approximately 27 hours of instruction

How We Measured It

We used STAR Math, the progress monitoring assessment the co-op already administers, and we looked at a single window: each student's winter benchmark against their spring benchmark. That brackets the spring semester almost exactly, so the measured period and the tutoring period line up.

STAR reports a grade-equivalent score, where 5.5 means a student is performing like a typical student in the middle of fifth grade. It's an intuitive scale, and it also makes the starting position plain.

At the winter benchmark, all ten students were performing below their grade placement in math, by between roughly one and three grade levels. The average student was close to two grade levels behind. An eighth grader scoring 5.5 and a seventh grader scoring 4.7 were not slightly behind. They were working several years under the material their grade expected of them.

What the Data Showed

Nine of the ten students had both a winter and a spring benchmark. Among those nine:

• 7 of 9 students gained ground
• The average gain was +0.51 grade levels, with a median of +0.4
• 4 students gained half a grade level or more
• 2 students gained more than a full grade level
• Results ranged from −0.6 to +2.0 grade levels

The two largest gains stand well clear of the rest. A sixth grader moved from 5.7 to 7.7, a two full grade level jump in one semester, finishing above her grade placement for the first time. A seventh grader moved from 4.7 to 6.1, a gain of 1.4 grade levels.

The Full Picture

*Student names replaced with letters. Student I's spring benchmark was not completed.

Reading These Numbers Honestly

Three things about this data deserve to be said plainly, because they change how the averages should be read.

1. The average is carried by two students. Set aside the +2.0 and the +1.4, and the remaining seven students averaged +0.17 grade levels. Most of this cohort moved forward modestly. Two moved a great deal. Both of those things are true, and an average of +0.51 on its own would hide the second one.
2. One semester is a short measuring window. Grade-equivalent scores are a coarse scale, and a single semester gives change less room to separate itself from ordinary test-to-test variation. Movements in the range of a few tenths, which includes both of our declines and several of our gains, should be read as modest signal rather than firm results. That caution cuts in both directions.
3. Two students lost ground. Student D slipped 0.6 grade levels and Student J slipped 0.3. We'd rather report that than trim it. Student J entered the semester three grade levels behind, the furthest back in the cohort, and finished the semester still roughly three years behind. Twice a week for 40 minutes was not the right intervention there, and the honest read is that this student needed a more intensive plan than the one we built.

What This Tells Us, and What It Doesn't

Ten students is a small cohort, and this was not a controlled study. With no comparison group of similar students who went without tutoring, we can't cleanly separate our 13 hours from everything else these students did that spring: their co-op instruction, their families' work at home, and a semester of ordinary growth.

It's also worth being clear about the ceiling. Most of these students are still below grade level. A semester of tutoring narrowed the distance for most of them. It did not close it.

What we can say is that a group of students who began the spring between one and three grade levels behind mostly moved forward rather than further back, in a semester, on about 13 hours of instruction. For students who have been behind long enough that the gap usually widens, moving the other way is the result that matters, and two of them moved far enough to change what their grade placement means for them.

What We're Carrying Forward

The pattern we're watching is the split inside this cohort. Two students responded dramatically to the same schedule that barely moved the middle of the group, and the one student who fell furthest behind was also the one furthest back when the semester started. For students more than two grade levels below placement, we're testing a heavier weekly schedule with the option to taper once they close ground. The Imperial Valley data is what pointed us there.

Ready to Put Targeted Math Support to Work?

Twenty-seven hours did not erase every learning gap, but for most students in this cohort, it created measurable progress toward the grade-level standard.

If your school, co-op, or homeschool community has students who are struggling to keep up in math, TurtlEd can help you build a tutoring program around their needs, schedule, and starting point. We offer personalized online tutoring, small-group instruction, progress monitoring, and regular reporting so educators can see how students are progressing.

Discover how TurtlEd can make a difference in your school community. Book a demo session today and experience firsthand the impact of our tutoring services.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why report state test scores instead of your own assessments? Because we did not write, administer, or score CAASPP. Internal assessments are useful for guiding instruction week to week, but an external measure is the more credible way to answer whether a program produced academic growth.

If the achievement level distribution didn't change, did the program work? For most of these students, yes, and the scale scores are where you see it. Achievement levels are wide bands, and a student can gain 30 or 40 points, real movement toward the standard, without crossing a threshold. Reporting only level changes would have hidden most of what happened in this cohort.

Is 27 hours enough to close a grade-level gap? Usually not on its own. Twenty-seven hours moved seven of ten students toward the standard, but none of them reached Standard Met in one year. Think of this dose as closing distance rather than closing a gap. Students furthest below grade level generally need more frequency, a longer runway, or both.

Why did some students decline? Two of the three declines were small enough to read as flat performance against a rising bar. The third was a genuine drop. In all three cases, the dose we prescribed was not matched to the size of the gap, which is the change we are making going forward.

Can a co-op or charter school run a program like this? Yes. This program was built around the co-op's schedule and delivered online during the school year. We design the group size, session frequency, and reporting cadence around what a school or co-op actually needs, and we share progress data with administrators throughout.

How do California families typically pay for tutoring like this? Many charter and independent study families use their instructional funds with approved vendors. Purchases generally need to go through the school's purchase order process before sessions begin, so it is worth asking your Education Specialist early in the year.