UPchieve, a free, 24/7 online tutoring and college counseling app for low-income students, announced Thursday that it will provide Title 1 middle and high school teachers with new tools to ensure their students get the academic support they need.
Called “UPchieve for Teachers,” the new service allows teachers to offer one-on-one support to their students. Teachers can invite students to sign up for tutoring, create classes, and monitor students' use of the platform. Previously, students had to sign up for tutoring services themselves, but with this new product, teachers can now invite students for one-on-one tutoring for free. In the coming weeks, teachers will also be able to assign tutoring sessions to entire classes.
UPchieve for Teachers is available to educators working in Title 1 middle and high schools. Title 1 is a federal aid program provided to K-12 schools that serve the highest number of low-income families in their districts. About 43 percent of public schools qualify for Title I funding, and fewer than 50,000 schools benefit from the program.
The new service is expected to help expand UPchive's user base by reaching students who may not know about the existence of such free services or who may not be actively seeking additional help.
“This product is going to be really valuable to teachers because it helps them accomplish some of the most difficult parts of their job,” founder Ali Murray told TechCrunch. “Students come into class with different gaps in foundational skills, and teachers have to try to support all of their students, but they don't have the time to support every single one. That's where private tutors come in. We're really excited to be releasing a product that gives teachers even more control.”
Image credit: UPchieve
UPchieve was founded by Murray in 2016, shortly after he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. As a former low-income student himself, he struggled to access academic support services throughout his time at university and wanted to make it easier for other students to get help whenever they needed it, even if they were working late into the night on their homework.
“I was raised by a single mother and as an immigrant to the United States, my mother wasn't able to do much to help me with schoolwork or college applications, which had a huge impact on my life. Things got very difficult and I often needed help late at night but didn't really have anywhere to turn to,” Murray said.
UPchieve says it has fulfilled more than 190,000 tutoring requests from more than 20,000 students across all 50 states. The 24/7 online tutoring sessions are conducted via in-app messenger or voice chat on the web or mobile app. UPchieve covers more than 30 subjects, including math, science, English, history and humanities.
Tutors can volunteer by registering on the website. Volunteers can be students, but must be in grade 9 or above. There are currently around 2,400 tutors active on the UPchieve platform.
“All UPchieve volunteers go through a background check, training and certification process to become a volunteer tutor. They must pass tests in all subjects they want to tutor students in before they can work with students,” Murray explained.
Image credit: UPchieve
Like other education technology companies, the company is using OpenAI's GPT-4o to help instructors provide AI-generated feedback and progress reports to students after a session is over. In the future, the company also plans to use AI to help instructors create practice questions and provide AI-generated summaries of student sessions through its Teachers product.
“We have no plans to replace human instructors with AI instructors in the near future,” Murray added.
As a nonprofit, UPchieve relies on charitable donations, grants, and paid partnerships with schools, districts, and corporations. Donors include Atlassian, AT&T, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Guggenheim Capital, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Skyline Foundation, and Verizon.
UPchieve has partnered with more than 50 schools, with each school or organization paying a yearly partnership fee of $10,000. The company is also a graduate of Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch.
In 2023, UPchieve raised over $4 million through philanthropy and revenue from paid partnerships. The company claims that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) is now $840,000, all of which comes from paid partnerships.