Partner Spotlight: How AJ Gutierrez is increasing educational equity through collaboration and evaluation

In this Evidence Champion series, J-PAL North America is recognizing individuals in our network who have made extraordinary contributions to the field of evidence-based policymaking. This year’s partner recipient is AJ Gutierrez, Co-Founder and Chief of Policy and Public Affairs at Saga Education. AJ has dedicated his career to increasing educational equity through high-impact tutoring. In this post, we feature AJ’s motivations and milestones in advancing evidence use in education.

A mission to increase educational equity for students like him

AJ’s lived experience, as a student who struggled in school, directly informs his mission to identify and scale effective teaching and learning strategies. AJ grew up in Boston with two sisters and a single mother who worked multiple jobs to keep their family afloat. Even though education was central to his family’s beliefs, AJ felt disconnected from school and struggled to keep up with his peers academically. Things changed in high school, when AJ met Alan Safran, Co-Founder of Saga Education, who at the time was the Executive Director of Match Education. AJ began participating as a student in individual high-dosage tutoring, which had a life-altering impact on his relationship with school and his academic trajectory for the better.

In 2014, AJ and Alan founded Saga Education to bring personalized, high-impact tutoring to schools across the United States. Saga’s model integrates individualized, daily math tutoring sessions into the school day in addition to core classroom instruction. AJ cites how his experience receiving high-impact tutoring in high school helped him understand how  working with someone who develops a student’s academic capacities while also cultivating a personal connection can empower students to see their potential. “It all comes back to the power of working with someone who not only builds your skills, but also knows your name, knows your birthday, and makes you feel that sense of belonging in school,” AJ explained. Yet AJ and Alan knew that to expand this work and generate buy-in from schools, they would need to rigorously assess the program’s impact on student learning. 

Building and leveraging evidence to generate bipartisan support for high-impact tutoring

Since 2013, AJ and the Saga team, in partnership with researchers in the J-PAL network and their co-authors, have conducted seven randomized evaluations of their tutoring model, demonstrating a deep commitment to using evidence to inform and continuously improve their program. Through rigorous evaluation, they found that Saga’s high-impact tutoring model increases math test scores, grades, and graduation rates across a student's academic trajectory.

Leveraging these evidence-based insights on how to implement the Saga model at scale, AJ began to advocate for increased resources to implement high-impact tutoring at both the local and federal level. In 2021, AJ provided expert testimony on Saga’s impact to the Colorado Education Committee, citing evidence from randomized evaluations on the positive effects of high-impact tutoring on students. Colorado House Bill 21-1234 was then signed into law in 2021, providing grant funding for the creation of high-impact tutoring programs across the state. 

At the federal level, AJ was instrumental in advancing the introduction of three bipartisan federal bills in the House and Senate, including the Access to High-Impact Tutoring Act (and spoke at the press conference where Rep. Sherrill formally introduced the bill). He has also collaborated closely with the Department of Education, the Biden-Harris Administration, and national nonprofits to help shape federal Covid-19 recovery education guidelines and establish the National Partnership for Student Success. This initiative exceeded its goal, mobilizing 320,000 tutors, student success coaches, and mental health professionals to support students nationwide.

Most recently, AJ led the coalition that secured Appropriations Report Language in the FY 2024 bill, which was signed into law in April 2024. This explanatory language provided guidance for states and the US Department of Education on prioritizing and allocating funds for evidence-based, high-impact tutoring. 

In the face of myriad, often conflicting perspectives on US education strategies, AJ has championed the use of rigorous evidence to generate bipartisan support and scale evidence-based solutions to improve student learning. 

Building a coalition and lifting the field

Over the past ten years, Saga’s growth and success has been bolstered through collaborations with researchers, community organizations, and research centers like J-PAL North America and the University of Chicago’s Education Lab. Monica Bhatt from the University of Chicago shared insight into how AJ has been able to grow Saga’s work: “Because he is such a gifted consensus builder, he knows how to not just get people to see and understand his vision, but work in service of making it a reality.  His passion and purpose are truly palpable in every room he’s in, and they make him a joy to partner with.”

AJ’s vision is not only to create high-impact tutoring programs and models but to share knowledge with others trying to do the same. He explained, “When I connect with nonprofit leaders, I try to have them think about how you can use evaluations to help usher in not only insights on what works but insights that help lift the field, because at the end of the day what we're trying to do is create real systems change.” 

And while AJ works to advance evidence generation and usage in partnership with many organizations in North America, he also does so internationally. In 2014, AJ and the Saga team supported the University of Amsterdam and The Bridge Learning Interventions in an evaluation of their high-impact tutoring program. AJ’s role in this collaboration was critical, sharing the tools and resources needed to understand and implement evidence-based, high-impact tutoring with another local nonprofit. 

Under AJ’s leadership, Saga continues to grow this work in other regions and countries, guided by their goal of lifting other organizations up so that they too can utilize evidence to inform their educational programs and help students reach their full potential. Saga Education co-founder Alan Safran summarizes the expansion of Saga’s impact and AJ’s pivotal role in this effort best: “We have taken our idea of high-impact tutoring globally, and in all of the spaces he operates, [AJ] is an authentic spokesman—in fact, the most authentic spokesman for the value of high impact tutoring.”