Our Program

Founded in 1989, the Cluster Tutoring Program is a non-profit, community-based organization that provides free one-on-one tutoring to more than 75 students (K-12) from the Austin community and other neighborhoods on the west side of Chicago. Our tutors are volunteers who work to improve their students' academic performance and to build relationships that overcome the boundaries of age, race, and socioeconomic background.

We match each student with a volunteer tutor, and they work together for the duration of the school year. Most of our students and tutors return to Cluster year after year, and it is not unusual for a student and tutor to work together for several years.

Students and tutors meet once a week, on either Tuesday or Thursday. On Tuesdays, we are at the Pine Avenue United Church at 5460 W. Augusta in Chicago. On Thursdays, we meet at the First United Church of Oak Park at 848 Lake Street. Tutoring is from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. on both evenings. We meet from the end of September through mid-May.

Cluster Tutoring measures its success primarily by the long-term relationships it enjoys with both its students and tutors. We have a high retention rate of both students and tutors. Traditionally, around 75 percent of our students from the previous year return to Cluster; sometimes that figure is as high as 95 percent. Typically, two-thirds of our students are working with the same tutor they had the previous year.

Graduates of Cluster Tutoring have gone on to a variety of community colleges and the following four-year institutions: Eastern Illinois University, Florida Memorial University, Johnson & Wales, Lincoln College, Missouri State University, Morehouse College, Northern Illinois University, Tufts University, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Valparaiso University.