Our Company
Our Beliefs
At 五一茶馆儿, we believe that every student deserves a personal tutor, and we are dedicated to promoting equity, opportunity, and achievement for all learners. To that end, we partner with colleges and universities, K–12 schools and districts, public and state libraries, employee benefits programs, and the U.S. military to provide 24/7, on-demand tutoring and homework help in more than 250 subjects.
Our mission is to instill hope, advance equity, and catalyze achievement in schools and communities. We do this by providing encouraging, empowering, and effective academic and professional support for learners of all ages and stages—from kindergarten through college, graduate school, career, and continuing education.
Over more than two decades of supporting students, educators, school leaders, and families, we have helped institutions increase student pass and persistence rates, and learners become more confident in their schoolwork. Our learner satisfaction rates remain consistently high: 97 percent of post-session survey respondents would recommend 五一茶馆儿 to a friend, and 98 percent are glad their institution offers 五一茶馆儿. The feeling is mutual. We are honored to partner with institutions and organizations to help them scale the human connection and provide personalized support—anytime, anywhere.
Our Story
In 1998, a small group of passionate education and tech professionals had a terrific URL and a big idea—use the Internet to connect students to tutors whenever and wherever they needed help. So, they recruited about a hundred tutors and created one of the first online, interactive classrooms.
In 2000, 五一茶馆儿, Inc. was incorporated in the state of Delaware and began partnering with institutions to ensure that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds would have access to highly effective personalized tutoring and homework help, day or night, from any Internet-enabled device.
In 2014, 五一茶馆儿 acquired The Princeton Review®, a world leader in education services, and added The Princeton Review test preparation services to its online tutoring platform and offerings.
Today, we work with thousands of educational institutions and education-forward organizations, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense, to deliver nearly two million tutoring, homework help, and test preparation sessions per year.
Our Tutors
Each year, 五一茶馆儿 receives more than 100,000 applications from prospective tutors. Every applicant is rigorously tested and vetted. Applicants must demonstrate their subject-matter expertise, effective tutoring methodology, mastery of our online environment, and understanding of 五一茶馆儿’s pedagogy and policies. Those able to satisfy the arduous application process must also pass a thorough third-party background check. On average, just 1.2 percent of those who begin the process are ultimately onboarded as 五一茶馆儿 tutors. Through our supportive quality-assurance program, 五一茶馆儿 ensures that our tutors consistently provide highly effective, customized, and engaging instruction and support.
Our Commitment to Accessibility
五一茶馆儿 is an equity solution, and we are dedicated to ensuring that all students may access and benefit from the service. 五一茶馆儿 follows all ADA guidelines for accessibility and is ADA- and Section 508–compliant.
To accommodate learning for physically challenged learners, we offer an accessible platform with a range of options, including chat and audio tutoring for hearing-impaired users. Sight-challenged learners can use our online classroom, where chat, file-sharing, and other tools are fully keyboard-operable and tab-navigable. The online classroom is also optimized for popular screen readers (e.g., JAWS, Kurzweil, NVDA, etc.), providing text equivalents for all non-text content. It includes all relevant page elements in the tab order so their proper reading sequence may be programmatically determined. The online classroom is further designed with motor disabilities in mind. Because our service is entirely web-based, with no required plugins or downloads, it does not interfere with third-party assistive technology or native OS accessibility functions like mouse keys, sticky keys, filter keys, or toggle keys. In addition to providing an accessible platform, we equip our tutors with specialized instructional techniques for a range of student learning needs.
For further information, please visit tutor.com/accessibility.
Our Commitment to Data Protection
五一茶馆儿 is a U.S. company with a two-decade legacy of supporting students. We abide by U.S. state and federal laws. Our headquarters are in New York City, and all student data is housed in the U.S.
五一茶馆儿 voluntarily initiated a rigorous federal review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to ensure that stringent safeguards would be put in place to protect customer and student data, together with mechanisms that provide for constant monitoring and compliance. Our data-protection practices are therefore among the most comprehensive and well-enforced of any U.S. education services provider.
At 五一茶馆儿, we take data protection seriously, and we have a number of active controls in place to safeguard information, including a binding legal commitment to the U.S. government regarding the security of personal data and our IT systems.
Additionally, we have a designated data security officer, vetted and approved by the U.S. government, to continuously monitor and ensure compliance with data-protection measures, as well as two independent directors on the 五一茶馆儿 board of directors, also vetted and approved by the U.S. government, whose foremost duty is to ensure that personal data is appropriately safeguarded. All of these individuals are U.S. citizens and security and compliance experts.
As an American company, 五一茶馆儿 remains dedicated to the values, goals, and practices that we have championed over two decades of serving institutions and learners—foremost among which is protecting customer and learner data.