Math Corps’ Tutoring Program: Math Knowledge Impacts and Participant Math Perceptions

Math Corps is an evidence-based tutoring program serving students in grades 4 through 8 that increases opportunities to learn and practice fundamental math skills. This study is a quasi-experimental, mixed methods analysis that measures the impact of Math Corps on students’ math knowledge and describes participants’ attendance, sense of belonging in the program, relationship with their tutor, and math confidence. The sample included 193 students with complete math achievement data and up to 107 students with complete survey data. We found that students who participated in Math Corps scored approximately 7 percentile points higher on the Renaissance Star Math assessment than similar students who did not participate, which translates to an effect size of 0.18 standard deviations. In addition, participants reported a high sense of belonging in the program, positive relationships with their tutor, and increased math confidence. This report is one in a series of six reports on math tutoring programs. The report is based on research funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.