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Nick has served as CEO & Founder of Blue Engine since 2009. Ehrmann began his career in education as a Teach for America corps member in Washington D.C., joining forces with local philanthropists in 2002 to launch the nonprofit “I Have a Dream”—Project 312. The partnership secured over $1M in commitments for a ten year, comprehensive youth development program for his fourth-grade students, many of whom are struggling to make it in the world of higher education. He was selected as a finalist for the Washington D.C. First-Year Teacher of the Year award and the national Teach For America Sue Lehmann Award. In 2003 he began graduate work at Princeton University as a William G. Bowen fellow and completed his PhD in sociology in 2010. His dissertation—Yellow Brick Road—explored the negative effects of academic underperformance on the transition from high school to college.  

Problem

In some school districts the connection between high school and college is seamless. In others, from the streets of DC and Chicago to rural communities in states like Texas and South Dakota, the skills gap between high school graduation and college readiness is staggering. Closing this gap—the gap between what it means to be college eligible and college ready—has become a national imperative. In recent decades, considerable progress had been made in the area of college access, especially among low-income, minority, and first-generation college students.

Innovation / New Solution

Blue Engine joins a national reform effort dedicated to breaking this cycle by recruiting, selecting, training, and supporting a nationwide professional tutoring corps dedicated to academic acceleration in high-need public high schools. By providing students with high doses of targeted academic instruction (200+ hours per student per year), curricular planning, college exposure, and family outreach, they aim to increase the pipeline of students who master core concepts as underclassmen, enroll and succeed in advanced coursework as upperclassmen, and graduate with the skills necessary to succeed in the world of higher education.

Impact

Blue Engine launched a multi-stage school selection process in the fall of 2009. During the first stage, we began an open search to generate a list of potential school partners based on the following criteria, followed by a rigorous internal review process that will culminate in the selection of a limited number (1-2) of site partnerships with public high schools in New York City. Demonstrating differential impact will help Blue Engine expand their operations and reach additional students in need of support, both in New York City and beyond. After two years working with entire grade levels (as opposed to individual students) in a school system where data collection procedures are implemented district-wide, Blue Engine will be in a position to state convincingly whether their programs appear to be having an impact on student achievement. Their analyses will compare results at Blue Engine schools with achievement data obtained in prior years (at our same school site(s)) as well as comparison schools across their “peer horizon." They published their Theory of Change to hold themselves accountable for results and to signal to the education, policy, and philanthropic communities that they have a clear set of metrics that they are using to measure our impact. Developing plans and procedures for data collection and analysis serves an important role in the optimization of program resources. By the summer of 2010, before their first class of Fellows sets foot inside a school building, they will have designed and implemented a data management system (incorporating surveys, program logs, and academic records) to track each of Blue Engine’s core activities, a trove of data that will be necessary to formally test whether the relationships outlined in their Theory of Change are working as hypothesized. These analyses will suggest, for example, why certain activities are accelerating achievement for some students and not others and allow us to adjust their program resources accordingly.

Expert Comments

• It has a promising model of tutor-focused support that can change the support ecosystem around high need schools.
  
  
• It has unique staffing and support patterns for low-income students and their schools. It productively enhances reform.
  
  

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