SMARTHINKING

One of the high priorities for the Terry Lee Wells Foundation is education, as Terry Lee was passionate about providing opportunities for children to achieve their full potential in life, and she believed that education is the key to their success.

In 2008 the Foundation awarded a three-year grant to the Education Alliance of Washoe County to implement the SMARTHINKING online tutorial program for 7th through 12th grade students in the Washoe County School District. SMARTHINKING provides free 24/7 tutoring in math, science, and language arts with a highly trained professional and lets students get help when needed. The Trustees believe that SMARTHINKING is an important resource that will help to achieve the ultimate goals of the Washoe County School District to improve graduation rates, remediation rates, and dropout rates in our local schools.

In order to truly make a difference with this grant the Foundation has established a partnership with the key stakeholders involved in providing education in our community and state. The basis of this partnership is the “Theory of Change,” a tool for identifying priorities, outcomes, and the intended impact of a grant. Specific, measureable, controllable indicators are used to track progress toward the desired outcomes.

The partners are working together to ensure that the program achieves its goals and that focus remains on evaluating the impact of the grant in both the short term and long term. Partners are the Foundation, Education Alliance, Washoe County School District, Truckee Meadows Community College, the University of Nevada, Nevada System of Higher Education, and Washoe Education Association. The Foundation believes that this partnership will be a model for other foundations to use in evaluating the impact of their grants and strengthening the relationship between foundations and their grantees.

A detailed evaluation of the first two years of SMARTHINKING use in WCSD has been completed. Some of the key findings are:

• Usage far exceeded initial projections, which resulted in a funding shortfall. Donations from other foundations and organizations were obtained in order to continue to offer the program to all students in WCSD through December 2010.

• In each of the first two years more than 3,000 students accessed tutoring in mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA), utilizing close to 7,000 hours of tutoring time. The most used subjects were the high school essay writing center, 7th and 8th grade essays, and algebra.

• A majority of students using SMARTHINKING have a GPA of 3.0 or better.

• There is a significant disparity in the number of schools that utilize the program ­ some use it a lot and others not at all.

• Comparative analysis of the students’ scores on both reading and math proficiency tests indicate that students who used SMARTHINKING had higher proficiency scores than non-users.

• A detailed case study of Vaughn Middle School, the highest user of SMARTHINKING among the middle schools in WCSD, with a high number of at-risk students, revealed that there were major differences between students who used SMARTHINKING and those who did not. In all cases, those who used SMARTHINKING had significantly higher scores in proficiency exams, as well as higher GPAs.

As a result of the limited funding available for the remainder of the 2010-2011 school year, a decision was made to limit access to SMARTHINKING during the second semester to only the students at Vaughn Middle School. This will allow WCSD to complete a full three year evaluation of the impact the program has had on a high-usage population in WCSD. We expect to see continued positive results, and hope that WCSD will find a way to institutionalize this program, so that all WCSD students will have the opportunity to benefit from this valuable service for years to come.


Teachers, students and parents have all praised the benefits of having one-on-one individual tutoring available and accessible at all times.


“I LOVE what Smarthinking.com does for my students… in 24 hours or less, ALL of my students get significant feedback on their writing… my students are exposed to different ideas which has led to some amazing class discussions.”

          Washoe County School District middle school teacher.


“I really like Smarthinking I use it for physics all the time. What’s really cool is that they can draw out what they are telling you how to do…It’s also really useful that it saves the whole conversation between you and the teacher helping you so you can look back on it…Overall I think it is a great resource that everyone should take advantage of…”

          Washoe County School District high school student.


“My daughter…has successfully used Smarthinking.com on many occasions when a problem arose on her homework that she did not completely understand. As a parent, I appreciate the convenience and the obvious professionalism of this valuable service…Knowing that there is a service available…has been a tremendous stress reliever.”

          Washoe County School District high school parent.