American Idea Foundation

Measuring Results, Expanding Opportunity, Improving Lives.

Blog

ASSISTments brings technology & evidence-based teaching to middle-school math classes in Maryland

by

By: AIF Staff

Since 2022, the American Idea Foundation (AIF) has awarded annual grants to organizations around the country that are developing a base of evidence and data around their programming and that are building on quantifiable metrics and research studies about the effectiveness of their interventions. This year, AIF will be supporting 7 distinct groups working on issues like childhood education, homelessness, proper parenting techniques, and poverty abatement. 

One of the organizations that AIF is proud to work with in 2025 is ASSISTments. 

Developed by Neil and Cristina Heffernan, who began their careers as middle-school math teachers, the mission of ASSISTments is to improve math instruction and comprehension by making learning more evidence-based and more aligned to meet the diverse needs of students. ASSISTments blends tutoring assistance with assessment reporting for teachers and students in fulfillment of the Heffernans’ vision, which was to ensure every student, particularly those in grades 3 through 8, is supported and successful in math classes. 

As the Heffernans’ said during an interview about the maturation of the program:  

“We created ASSISTments to help as many teachers and students as possible. After we learned that the ASSISTments intervention was effective, we set the goal to have every middle school student in the country get immediate feedback on their homework. 

We created ASSISTments to be used by real teachers and have been improving it with each grant. Because of the effectiveness of ASSISTments, we kept getting funded to make improvements allowing our user base to grow.”

ASSISTments aims to improve mathematics education by giving schools access to their proprietary online tools and by providing training for teachers so they can educate students using illustrative assignments aligned with testing-standards and curriculum. 

This tech-based programming also provides instant data to students and teachers, allowing them to adjust their instruction in real-time. The goals are to help students build math skills in real-time, to help them understand that mistakes are part of the learning process, and to utilize data and technological tools to improve test scores and engagement in math. 

 This video shows how ASSISTments works with schools, teachers, and students to improve math scores. 

Because its founders believed in the importance of data and real-time assessments, ASSISTments has developed one of the strongest bases of evidence across education interventions. 

A 2016 randomized controlled trial measured the impact of ASSISTments by studying 7th grade students at 43 schools in Maine. The researchers found that: 

“[The] online mathematics homework intervention produced a positive impact on students’ mathematics achievement at the end of a school year. Students with low, rather than high, prior achievement benefited more. 

The intervention provided students with personalized feedback and hints immediately, more typically, students wait until the next day to know what they did right and wrong and to get help. When students struggled, they had additional opportunities to work toward mastery in supplementary problem sets. The intervention also enabled formative assessment practices for teachers, such as adapting their discussions of homework to fit students’ needs. Specific professional development was provided to teachers to enable them to enact these adaptive practices.”

Ultimately, test scores went up in standardized mathematics assessments and this study spurred additional research into the impact of ASSISTments. 

More recently, a replication study by North Carolina State University was conducted measuring 6,000 students at 63 different North Carolina schools. Though this study was impacted by COVID-19 and changing learning modalities, the study found that students whose teachers used ASSISTments in 7th grade had significantly higher scores on the North Carolina 8th-grade End-of-Grade math test compared to the control group. The effect size was similar to the Maine study and equally important, the positive impact of ASSISTments persisted with improved math scores over time. 

ASSISTments has been recognized by the federal What Works Clearinghouse and is one of the few mathematics-education interventions with credible evidence supporting it. Multiple researchers have found that ASSISTments does 3 critical things: 

  1. ASSISTments provides long-term gains for students, improving test scores over multiple years. 
  2. It narrows the achievement gap, with students of color seeing the strongest effects among subgroups.
  3. It has a more profound impact in schools with higher percentages of economically disadvantaged students and those in resource-limited schools. 

Because of this commitment to evidence and because of the short-term and long-term benefits of ASSISTments, Maryland Governor Wes Moore announced he would provide 24,000 Maryland students with access to ASSISTments from 2024-2028. 

This effort, conducted as part of Maryland’s Partnership for Proven Programs will give participating schools access to ASSISTments, as well as a multi-layered support model that includes: 1) A full-day summer training for teachers, 2) 3-5 in-person coaching visits per year, and 3) implementation planning and regular progress check-ins with schools and district leadership. At the end of the four years, the goal is to see math achievement on standardized tests improve in Maryland and to build the base of evidence around this intervention. 

To understand the real-world impact that ASSISTments is having in classrooms across America, listen to one of the teachers who utilizes it and hear firsthand how it helps her students understand and learn math. . 

With data-driven solutions like ASSISTments, America’s students will have better access to modern educational tools and will have a deeper understanding of mathematics, which will have compounding benefits throughout their lives. The American Idea Foundation is proud to support ASSISTments as this evidence-based intervention helps school districts, teachers, and individual students.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here.  

College Possible expands access to higher education in a data-driven way

by

By: AIF Staff

American Idea Foundation President and former House Speaker Paul Ryan has long believed that education is essential to helping individuals experience upward mobility and economic prosperity. There is a strong correlation between economic well-being and educational attainment, which is why the American Idea Foundation is working with organizations who are expanding access to higher education, helping students (often first-generation students or under-represented communities) to complete their degrees, and doing so in an evidence-based way.

One of these groups, which was awarded a grant from the American Idea Foundation in 2025, is College Possible.

Founded by Jim McCorkell, who was a first-generation college student, in St. Paul, Minnesota, College Possible was built on the belief that every student, regardless of their individual challenges, should have a chance to attend and succeed in college.

Starting with 35 students and a group of AmeriCorps coaches, College Possible has helped nearly 100,000 students since they began twenty-five years. Their expansion is due in large part to their unique programming model and their fidelity to data and evidence.

College Possible matches eligible students with near-peer coaches and provides an intensive curriculum designed to help these students overcome the most common barriers to getting into college and completing their degrees at no cost to students or their families.

These peer coaches operate from one of College Possible’s 8 sites across the country and provide students who have been identified and selected as having high academic potential and who come  from low-income backgrounds, with 5 critical services: 

(1) academic support through ACT/SAT test preparation;

(2) college application assistance;

(3) financial aid consulting;

(4) guidance in the transition to college; and

(5) coaching throughout college to support the academic confidence, financial literacy and resilience needed to graduate.

Originally conceived as a program centered around “test prep help for students who can’t afford Kaplan,” College Possible has expanded methodically. It now has a presence in 8 regions of the country, with sites stretching from Austin, TX to Seattle, WA, and College Possible’s near-peer coaches have assisted nearly 100,000 students on their college journeys.

To see the impact College Possible has had on the lives of young Americans, check out this video featuring testimonials from students enrolled in the College Possible Wisconsin program.

Beginning in 2008, College Possible began working with the Milwaukee Public School system, deploying their model to help students successfully apply and complete an undergraduate degree. In 2018, a multi-year evaluation was commissioned to measure how students participating in the College Possible program performed relative to a peer group, who were also in the Milwaukee Public School system.

The results of the evaluation were impressive. Among them:

  • College Possible students were 30% more likely to enroll in college immediately after high school.
  • College Possible students completed 1.4x the number of scholarship applications relative to the comparison group.
  • Enrolled students were 30% more likely to attend a 4-year college or university.

Equally important was the finding that the more often students participated in the College Possible program, the higher their college enrollment and persistence rates were.

These state-specific results lend credibility to a 2013 randomized controlled trial conducted by Professor Chris Avery of Harvard’s Kennedy School. This evaluation, which consisted of 238 Minnesota juniors and seniors who were randomly selected and split into treatment and control groups, found the following:

  • Participating in College Possible led to a statistically significant increase in college enrollment by around 19 to 21%.
  • Utilizing College Possible increased the likelihood of applying to a “highly competitive” or “very competitive” school and increased the number of applications submitted, particularly to four-year programs.
  • The effectiveness of College Possible’s programming was limited when it came to standardized test scores and the positive impact diminished over time as students enrolled in college degree programs.

As College Possible has matured as an organization, they have tweaked their model to account for some of these research findings. In 2016, to ensure that the robust, hands-on support continued throughout students’ college journeys, College Possible created the Catalyze program, which is a partnership where peer-coaches work with student support teams directly on campuses to help 1st year and 2nd year students remain on track towards degree completion.

In 2024, the Catalyze program helped 4,000 students graduate from 9 partner schools. It works by having coaches, who are often recent graduates of the same institution and partner campus, work directly with enrolled students to navigate registration, financial aid renewals, degree requirements, and connections to on-campus resources. These college freshmen and sophomores benefit from a trusted relationship with their near-peer coach and access to College Possible’s tech-enabled curriculum, which hopefully increases the likelihood of their remaining in school through graduation.

College Possible has recognized the importance of evidence and data in measuring success and the organization has gone a step further by augmenting their programming in response to early studies and experiments. They are committed to meeting the long-term needs of students and have worked tirelessly to help under-resourced students not only gain acceptance to colleges but to succeed and graduate upon admission.

The data from College Possible alumni is a testament to the program’s impact. In a 2024 survey of alumni, 95% of college graduates were employed, 71% were saving for retirement, 57% have experienced material career advancements, and nearly 40% were pursuing or had completed an advanced degree.

College Possible was created with the noble goal of helping every young person in America pursue higher education and because of the effectiveness of their peer-coaches and their reliance on evidence and data in shaping their programming, they are well on their way to succeeding. The American Idea Foundation looks forward to partnering with them as they continue to scale and assist more deserving students get into college and ultimately graduate.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here. 

CarePortal: Harnessing technology and civil society to help America’s at-risk youth

by

By: AIF Staff

American Idea Foundation President Paul Ryan has long believed that America is at her best when civil society, which he often defines as the space between citizens and their government, is strong. Rather than simply waiting on government to help fellow citizens in times of need, Americans have always prided themselves on assisting their neighbors and community members who are struggling, often utilizing churches, philanthropic, or civic groups to organize these efforts.

This community-driven approach to solving some of America’s social challenges is what animates the work being done by CarePortal, one of the organizations that the American Idea Foundation will be supporting in 2025 with financial assistance and technical expertise.

CarePortal is an online hub, a digital platform, and a networking community that links caseworkers, social service agencies, churches, local philanthropists, and aid organizations with individual families and children in times of crisis.

CarePortal predominately serves those involved in the child welfare system or those who are at risk of entering the child welfare system due to preventable causes like poverty and neglect. The organization’s mission is to keep families together, keep children healthy and happy, and harness the power of technology and networking to create a community of caregivers that those in-need can turn to during trying times.

Each service provided or request met via CarePortal is designed to prevent children from entering foster care, to strengthen their families, to improve their educational or health outcomes, and to do so before a breakdown occurs.

Here’s a quick example of how CarePortal works:

  • A social worker or caseworker identifies a specific need for a child, ideally before they enter the foster care system, and enters a request for assistance via the CarePortal platform or app.
  • This request for assistance is then shared with local churches, businesses, non-profits, and individuals, giving them a real-time opportunity to immediately respond and help those in their community.
    • These requests can be for financial assistance on rent, transportation, food, clothing, or any type of support related to a child’s well-being and safety.
  • These requests are met by these civic or faith-based organizations and ideally, a family is strengthened, or a child is helped in a way that prevents them from going into the foster care system.

This video drives home further how CarePortal works with individuals and organizations to help local families and children in need.

CarePortal’s growth is driven by individuals and communities’ desire to support their neighbors in-need. The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Kessler described CarePortal as “The Uber of Foster Care,” and explained the organization’s maturation in this way: 

“The origin story: Healthcare executive Adrien Lewis and his wife began fostering children in 2011 and spent two years trying to get churches in the Kansas City area to recruit foster parents—no easy task. Then, “out of nowhere,” Mr. Lewis says, “I get a vision for CarePortal, to leverage technology to connect. In crisis, those touched by the child-welfare system could connect with churches and people who care in proximity that would want to help if they knew. What would happen if you could expose people to the reality that a bed or crib or car seat, or paying a bill, things that were small, like 6-inch barriers, would actually make a difference to keep kids out of foster care and reunify biological families?” Heck of a vision.

So “with shoestring and duct tape, we pulled together different software platforms and kind of jimmied them together. A pilot of CarePortal hit the market in Austin, Texas, in late 2014. People went nuts over it. The very first request was for a family with a bedbug problem who was trying to adopt a cousin who had been in foster care. Supplies and volunteers solved their bedding problem.”

From those earnest beginnings, CarePortal has developed a network of 1,000 agencies and 6,000 local church and aid response teams across 37 different states that serve a projected 140,000 children and families annually.

In the same Wall Street Journal piece, CarePortal CEO Joe Knittig summed up the group’s work succinctly:

“Uber is to ride-sharing what CarePortal is to care sharing—community-based care sharing. Every day, we have 350 children that are actually being served by their neighbors through CarePortal.” The plan is to scale it to thousands.

Mr. Knittig explains, “CarePortal at its essence is a request-response loop.” On one side are social-service professionals, social workers and others who enter “real-time vetted needs of kids and families in crisis” into the CarePortal app. On the other side are local churches and community responders who see the need and jump into action. “Bedding is the No. 1 need entered into CarePortal. But there could be relational things like ‘I need a mentor.’”

Today, there are over 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system. The United States spends $30 billion on foster care annually, yet research increasingly shows that preventing foster care is more cost effective and yields better outcomes for both children and families. CarePortal leans into this idea by providing a proactive, connected system of local support for families and children facing immediate crisis.

By combining modern technology with local civic, philanthropic, and faith-based organizations’ desire to help society’s most vulnerable children, CarePortal has hit on an innovative and impactful strategy to keep families intact. The American Idea Foundation is proud to support their efforts to strengthen civil society and assist our neighbors in times of crisis.

To learn more about the American Idea Foundation’s 2025 grant recipients, click here.