Partnership Spotlight

Naples Children Foundation

Building tutoring excellence through partnership and innovation.

The Opportunity

Recognizing that math proficiency serves as a vital pathway to future opportunities, the Naples Children Foundation identified a powerful opportunity to advance educational mathematics outcomes for students in Collier County, Florida.

Understanding that their robust network of Out-of-School Time (OST) programs was already providing critical support to students, the Foundation partnered with the UF Lastinger Center to further enhance tutors’ capacity to deliver exceptional math instruction and support through the development of specialized professional learning.

Listen First, Solutions Second

Listening Tour

Aligning with our founding philosophy, the Lastinger Center first conducted a comprehensive Listening Tour across Immokalee, hosting eight focus groups with teachers, paraprofessionals, Collier County district leaders, tutors, students, and families with out-of-school programs.

Project Development & Pilot

Pathway Development

Our research led to the creation of a dynamic online professional learning pathway featuring six interactive modules tailored for out-of-school tutors and instructors. This program equips tutors with practical, evidence-based strategies to enhance students’ grasp of fundamental math concepts and boost their learning confidence.

Pilot Phase

In Spring and Summer 2025, 119 tutors from 7 tutoring organizations participated in the initial pilots. Early results were promising, showing significant knowledge gains and high satisfaction among participants. Throughout the pilot period, the team conducted regular check-ins with participants to monitor engagement and impact.

Scaling Success

Evaluation

At the Lastinger Center, rigorous research and evaluation are integral to our work. We assessed our program’s effectiveness by measuring engagement, knowledge growth, improvement in tutoring/instruction, and students’ mathematics outcomes. Pilot participants showed significant gains in effective tutoring knowledge, reported high satisfaction with the program, and noted significant improvements in their instructional approaches with students.

Implementation

The impact extends beyond Collier County. The math tutoring framework is serving as the foundation for the Advanced Tutoring in Mathematics course for the Florida Tutoring Advantage. This ensures that the same high-quality, high-impact content reaches as many tutors across Florida as possible to support improved math performance outcomes for students.

As we continue evaluating outcomes and refining our approach, this partnership exemplifies how listening to communities and responding with targeted solutions can create lasting change in math education – one tutor, one student, one success story at a time.

My biggest takeaway from this course was how to reach the students who are struggling. I need to really sit with them and figure out different ways to help them think on their own. I realize that I’m always set on them getting the answer rather than the student understanding the process and being able to apply it.

Paraprofessional Tutor

RCMA