Behind Varsity Tutors' Free Live Courses, Test Prep, and Chat-Tutoring for Schools

I recently had the chance to catch up with Anthony Salcito, who leads Varsity Tutors for Schools and is responsible for Nerdy’s efforts to support institutions as they work to transform learning opportunities for students and educators across a range of offerings. Prior to joining Nerdy, Anthony served as Vice President of Worldwide Education at Microsoft, where he helped launch many of the company’s cornerstone education programs and was responsible for driving Microsoft’s education work globally. In our conversation, Anthony answered my questions around whether tutoring will remain in school districts as COVID stimulus funds wind down and what is it about Varsity Tutors' business model that allows them to provide on-demand live courses, test prep, and chat-tutoring for free.

***

MH: In "Disrupting Class," Clayton Christensen and I argued that disruptive innovation can help education by introducing new, more customized learning solutions that initially target unserved segments of the market where the alternative would be nothing at all. We were excited by the potential to use technology to make learning more personalized and accessible. Against that backdrop, your new offering that makes the Varsity Tutors platform free to schools and districts is quite intriguing to me. What drove your decision?

Salcito: As COVID stimulus funds wind down, budget-strapped states and districts need to be able to reallocate resources to the students who need it most. District leaders continue to face huge challenges: lingering learning loss alongside teacher retention and burnout underscore the need for deeper instructional support for every child. Many leaders are facing the choice over whether they should provide on-demand support to every student in the district or focus intensive interventions on a smaller subset of students. But, we believed there had to be a better way. We realized our scale—serving millions of students directly and through schools—paired with more than 17 years’ of investment and innovation in learning technology allows us to make the on-demand resources so many districts were paying for during the pandemic available at no cost. The intention, then, is that districts can invest their limited resources in the sort of high-dosage tutoring that research has shown to be highly effective, which is what we’ve been delivering to students for nearly two decades. No student should have to wrestle with learning alone. When disruption drives down costs, people can retain critical services while re-invest in new service and supports that would otherwise be out of reach. Our goal is to give all students the benefits of individualized and continuous learning support, and to give districts more flexibility with the resources they have. 

MH: What is it about your business model and technology that enables you to provide on-demand live courses, test prep, and chat-tutoring for free? Obviously the first 15 years of Varsity Tutors was honed in direct-to-consumer offerings, so is that part of what makes this possible?

Salcito: That’s right. Our unique scale and experience serving millions of families directly (via our consumer business) paired with years of innovating around the delivery of live, virtual, video-based tutoring has allowed the company to build a network of 40,000 tutors on the platform and rich suite of resources and tools that we know students love. Unlike in schools, where kids have to be—regardless of the experience—families who are paying for tutoring can opt out if they aren’t having a great experience. That kind of consumer-responsiveness doesn’t always show up in traditional edtech business models—where the paying customer is often different from the user.  And, during COVID, we saw a lot of growth in the number of families using our platform directly—in addition to 1:1 tutoring—which accelerated our investment in building out a suite of study resources/tools, live courses, and chat-based support. Our StarCourse series is a great example of the power of scale. StarCourses are live video classes held many times per month featuring renown experts, celebrities, museum curators, etc. We’re able to bring these amazing individuals to schools virtually across the over 500 school districts we serve. It also allows these experts to reach a US-wide audience of learners to maximize their inspirational and instructional impact. Our scale has then made it possible to drive down costs for state and school leaders. In other words, this allows districts to offer both critical on-demand support to all students, while directing more time-intensive resources to students in greatest need. 

MH: Hundreds of districts are taking advantage of this. What kind of engagement are you seeing so far? Any interesting trends in what topics or grade bands are taking the most advantage?

Salcito: We are seeing a very positive response. Over 300 districts are taking advantage of the platform offering, which is available at no cost through 2030. The range of the offerings provide the flexibility schools need. Some students love taking the elective classes, others rely on the availability of live tutors to help them work through tough questions, while others are taking advantage of individualized learning plans generated from our self assessment tools. As we approach summer, this is also a time when we’ll see SAT and ACT test prep season ramp up. With many colleges and universities announcing they will reinstate using SAT and ACT scores as part of their admissions criteria, we believe this category will provide substantial opportunity for us to test and refine our consumer freemium offering given the acceleration in demand we are seeing for these tests.

MH: You’re giving districts a runway through 2030. Do you think districts will use this flexibility along with existing dollars to really invest in high-dosage tutoring as a mainstay? Or will the end of ESSER funding mean that we see tutoring fade away?

Salcito: I do. Several years ago, I wrote that districts and schools increasingly have the infrastructure, technology, and sense of urgency in place needed to thoughtfully integrate tutoring into daily instruction. Tutoring should be an instructional strategy in the hands of all educators. We no longer have to teach to the middle and lose students on either edge. We can bring the necessary resources to support individual instructional needs with the integration to school workflow that uplifts the role of the educator. Our vision is that teachers, who understand students' needs best, are able to deploy a range of high dosage tutoring models in real-time (in-person, video-based) to personalize instruction for students, while supplementing with additional resources like online courses, study groups, chat-based tutoring. By reducing the cost of delivering some of those supplemental methods, we’re able to offer district leaders more flexibility to think about the instructional models that will allow them to best serve the wide variety of needs in their district.