A little blue square with a white “P” on it sits in the corner of every Google Doc opened on a school computer. The widget expands to say “Launch Paper” when hovered over. But, when attempting to get work checked by the program, students will be met with error messages trying to find Woodside’s login page.
As of this school year, the Sequoia Union High School District (SUHSD) has stopped using Paper Tutors and is now using Varsity Tutors, which provides many of the same services. Blaine Dzwonczyk, a social studies teacher, has encouraged students and families to use Varsity.
“I definitely think it would benefit students,” Dzwonczyk said. “Some things students might need support with, like while they’re working at home or if they have a free period and it might be helpful to get some information from a tutor who can walk them through an assignment.”
The site, along with offering 24/7 live tutoring and essay review which is free to students in the district, also has weekly classes available on topics ranging from marine science by the South Carolina Aquarium to writing workshops run by renowned authors. The site partners with over 500 districts across the US.
“We hope that students are able to use online tutoring to help support them academically at any time of the day to ask questions, gain additional understanding, and boost confidence,” Barbara Reklis, coordinator of instructional technology and innovation at SUHSD, wrote over email.
Paper Tutors is an online tutoring service with similar capabilities as Varsity, including on demand tutoring, post secondary pathway support and interactive programs to help students retain knowledge. Junior Gabriela Ribera used the program to revise English homework for an advanced class last year. The site was helpful, but she found it to not be as effective for the advanced class she was taking.
“It was useful if you needed it for a certain level but it was not helpful for me,” Ribera said.
However, she did enjoy how the tutors were always available and that they could “give you well thought out feedback”. Despite this, Ribera wouldn’t use Paper in the future.
The company has recently been in hot water, “Paper now laid off its entire Canadian tutor workforce, affecting hundreds of people” according to The Globe and Mail. Betakit reported that “paper cut 45% of its approximately 180 head office employees” on Aug. 16, right before most schools started back up. The company has also undergone a change of CEO, bringing in a successful Silicon Valley education entrepreneur. This wasn’t why SUHSD stopped using Paper, though.
“After a small pilot of Varsity Tutors last spring, almost 80% of students either preferred Varsity tutoring to Paper or had no preference,” Reklis wrote. “About half of respondents flat-out preferred Varsity, whereas only about 20% preferred Paper.”
Another thing that influenced this decision was the fact that Varsity Tutors offers free tutoring for schools and districts.
“Switching to Varsity allows us to offer similar tutoring features as Paper at a substantial cost savings for the district,” Reklis wrote.
The district had used Paper for two years prior to switching programs. Data shows that in the 2023-24 school year there were 205 active students using Paper and 160 essays reviewed, and 582 individual tutoring sessions, not a lot for a district with around 10,000 students spanning seven schools.
Students are excited to use the new program. Freshman Liliana Labiana hasn’t used the program yet, but is planning on trying it out soon.
“I think it’ll help me stay on track with my grades,” Labiana said. “[Also, I think it’ll] help me learn a bit more and get ahead of my classes.”
