Model and Strategy
The San Francisco Education Ed Fund was founded in 1979 as a response to Proposition 13 decimating funding for public education in California, and since then has consistently mobilized the San Francisco community to champion equitable access to quality education for all public school students. As the first third-party intermediary in the nation focused solely on uplifting local public school teachers, students, and their schools, the SF Ed Fund has spent 45 years building a powerful legacy of community engagement and quality learning. Through a robust volunteer network and strong partnerships with the district and city, the SF Ed Fund continues to bring essential programs to high-benefit school communities across San Francisco.
In the face of a deepening literacy crisis—where only half of third graders in San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) are reading at grade level—the SF Ed Fund has expanded access to high-impact literacy tutoring in partnership with SFUSD. Stanford’s National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) defines high-impact literacy tutoring as a consistent, qualified tutor working with students at least three times per week using high-quality, science-of-reading-backed materials.
According to the NSSA, high-impact literacy tutoring is the most successful literacy intervention, and the SF Ed Fund’s model allows for scale across SFUSD.
The SF Ed Fund partners with NSSA to carefully vet high-impact literacy tutoring providers and then matches providers with schools serving students who stand to make the most gains. These providers include virtual providers as well as in-person providers, which allows the SF Ed Fund to offer a range of formats and times to partnering schools.
In addition to managing provider partnerships, the SF Ed Fund plays a critical role in program implementation. It works with school leaders to identify the students who would benefit most from tutoring, ensures consistent attendance through family and teacher engagement, and provides on-the-ground support to ensure strong implementation. As SFUSD rolls out a new, science-of-reading-backed curriculum, the SF Ed Fund’s tutoring model complements this district-wide shift, offering an additional layer of targeted instruction aligned to classroom learning.
Looking ahead, the SF Ed Fund aims to bring high-impact literacy tutoring to 3,000 students annually, focusing its efforts in schools with high concentrations of students from low-income backgrounds and students not yet meeting literacy standards. By coordinating and delivering this intervention at scale, the SF Ed Fund is helping to ensure more students leave third grade as confident, proficient readers on track for long-term academic success.
Impact
The San Francisco Education Fund’s high-impact tutoring program has become a key lever for improving early literacy outcomes in SFUSD, especially in the wake of pandemic-related learning disruptions. Since its launch in 2021, the program has supported more than 6,300 students across the district, targeting those not yet reading at grade level and pairing them with trained tutors for consistent, small-group or one-on-one instruction multiple times per week.
The program draws on research from Stanford’s National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA), which identifies high-impact tutoring as one of the most effective interventions for struggling readers. In San Francisco, results reflect this evidence base: students who attend 70% or more of their tutoring sessions routinely achieve more than a year’s growth in reading skills. These gains are especially meaningful in a district where only 51% of third graders currently meet literacy benchmarks—and where proficiency rates for English Learners, Black, and Latinx students are significantly lower.
In 2023-24, the Ed Fund partnered with 15 SFUSD schools to serve over 1,000 students, refining its model to address school capacity constraints and preferences. This year, two new NSSA-vetted providers—Chapter One (in-person) and Air Reading (virtual and adaptive)—joined existing partner BookNook, expanding the program’s flexibility and reach. The addition of in-person tutoring has been particularly valuable in K-2 classrooms, providing individualized support without requiring school staff to supervise virtual sessions.
Beyond literacy instruction, the Ed Fund supports school communities by placing trained classroom volunteers, helping maintain learning momentum amid severe staffing shortages. In the most recent school year, 319 volunteers contributed nearly 30,000 service hours at 86 schools. Teacher surveys revealed that 98% of educators felt more supported, and 95% observed academic growth in students as a result of this additional capacity.
““We love it. It’s like having an additional full-time employee whose sole job is to reinforce foundational skills in K-2. [Our school’s tutor] is fantastic—she is multilingual, has great rapport with the kids, and is independent but also collaborative.” — Instructional Coach Annie Roach, Bret Harte Elementary School
Over the long term, the Ed Fund’s goal is to help meet SFUSD’s ambitious target of raising third-grade literacy rates from 51% to 70% by 2027. With SFUSD facing a $113 million budget shortfall and over 500 staff cuts planned by 2025–26, the Ed Fund’s scalable, evidence-aligned tutoring model offers a critical tool for safeguarding student learning and advancing early literacy districtwide.
Leadership
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Ann Levy Walden
CEO
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Terrence Riley
Executive Director, SF Literacy Coaliton
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Rebecca Kroll
COO
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Laura King
Chief Development Officer