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Blue Engine Teaching Assistant Alexandra DiAddezio helps 10th-grade geometry students Kelvin Perez, 15, Oliver Batlle, 15, and Ian Smith, 14, with a project.

How does the shape of a polygon change as one of its angles widens? What is an “acute angle”? Do you need help using a protractor?

These are questions Aisha Chappell wishes she could individually ask each of her 33 tenth-grade geometry students when they split into small groups to perform a hands-on project about angles and symmetry.

In the past, it would have been a challenge for Chappell to circle her classroom at the Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School and address each of her students’ needs during individual or group work time. But this year Chappell has three teaching assistants to navigate the room with her.

The teaching assistants come through a year-old nonprofit called Blue Engine, which trains recent college graduates to help teachers push their students with more personalized attention. Founder Nick Ehrmann, who previously taught through Teach for America and founded a youth mentoring nonprofit, conceived of Blue Engine as a strategy to address a major problem identified in high-performing high schools: that too many students graduate from high school and start college, but founder once they get there.

One theory, held by KIPP charter school officials and others, is that “no excuses”-style schools need to do a better job of teacher character traits, such as resilience, that successful college students possess. Ehrmann has a different theory: The students simply need to learn more in high school.

“The strongest predictor in completion of college is the academic rigor of your high school coursework,” he said, citing research from the National Center for Educational Statistics.

That’s where Blue Engine’s 26 teaching assistants, known in the classroom as “BETAs,” come in. In addition to overseeing the small groups, they also support the full-time teaching staff by grading assignments and identifying and analyzing trends in student work. All of this amounts to what Ehrmann calls “high-dose tutoring.” (more…)