Fullmind Review: Services, Costs, Terms and Reviews

Fullmind is a top-ranked e-learning services platform that aims to provide all children with access to high-quality education, regardless of their location, academic background, and unique needs. This is done through virtual staffing of schools and school districts in addition to the delivery of synchronous core instructions and supplemental instructions based on demand. 

Fullmind review shows that the company does everything possible to mimic in-person education via real-time interactions between students and educators in all cases as well as regular parent-teacher conferences and instructors’ participation in staff meetings and professional development programs in case of virtual staffing.

Fullmind Overview

Fullmind is a leading e-learning services provider that solves teacher shortage problems with online, in-person educators across the US. The company was founded in 2012 under the name iTutor in order to assist two New York schools in serving the most vulnerable students including homebound students with behavioral challenges and medically fragile children. Since then, the platform has been adding new solutions that solve pain points for school leaders in the context of the increasingly more complicated needs and challenges of online education.

The company mission is for every child to have access to exceptional education. To achieve that, Fullmind aims to expand the walls of schools to incorporate highly qualified, state-certified teachers from around the county. The Fullmind approach imitates the most important aspects of in-person education emphasizing seamless interaction between students and instructors and real-time feedback at all times. Currently, the core services of Fullmind focus on core instruction, supplemental instruction, and virtual staffing to solve the teacher vacancy crisis. 

The company has its headquarters in Houston, TX while offering e-learning services across the nation. At the moment, there are over 1,700 educators on the platform that have an average brick-and-mortar education experience of 16 years and over half have Masters Degrees. The school is also an accredited digital learning institute with Cognia, the same governing body that accredits the majority of schools across the country. Fullmind teachers and instructors hold more than 7,000 certifications in various subjects for all grades (K-12).

Fullmind Services

Fullmind offers a range of e-learning services that help address the staffing challenges of schools and school districts while ensuring that all students are given access to quality education.

Fullmind services include:

• Virtual staffing for schools and school districts
• Tutoring for students and small groups
• Credit recovery for students and groups
• Homebound instructions for students
• Suspension alternatives for students
• Resource room for students and groups
• State test prep for students, groups, and whole classes
• Homework help for students and small groups

It’s important to note that Fullmind partners with schools and school districts to provide services to their management teams and students. The company doesn’t work directly with individual students.

Instruction and tutorial services can be delivered to:

• Individual students
• Small groups of students
• Whole classes

The core services offered by Fullmind are:

Core Instruction

Fullmind state-certified instructors are able to teach credit-bearing courses full-time or part-time. Core instruction services are available for all subjects and all grade levels, K-12. Instructions can be delivered one-on-one, in small groups, or to entire classes, including home and brick-and-mortar settings.

Core instruction includes the following options:

• Homebound instruction: Fullmind provides full-scale physical school experience to homebound students making sure that their education is synced with the education of their classmates. Fullmind has the capacity to coordinate, monitor, and assess the entire teaching process and support homebound students and their families with consistent, quality lessons.
• Whole-class instruction: Fullmind offers full-time and part-time instructors including co-teachers to help out schools and school districts that face teacher shortages. Customized, high-engagement, high-quality courses are provided to individual students, small groups, and whole classes, with instructions available at home and at school.
• Credit recovery: Fullmind online instructions allow high-school students to re-take courses or re-do specific coursework to fulfill course requirements and recover course credit. Both partial and full-credit recovery options are available to help at-risk students graduate successfully and on time. Psychological support is offered to vulnerable students to gain the confidence needed for academic success.
• Suspension alternatives: Fullmind provides students facing suspension and their families with an efficient method of getting back on track combining the completion of schoolwork and psychological support. Home instructions are synced with classroom curriculum to prevent falling behind during suspension periods and to guarantee academic success.

Supplemental Instruction

Fullmind supplemental instructions are designed to enhance classroom education to ensure that every student succeeds. Certified educators can work on IEPs, skill gaps, enrichment, and remediation. Instructions are individualized to meet and exceed every student’s needs.

Related services include:

• Tutoring: Fullmind tutoring emphasizes practical support to supplement the curriculum as needed to boost student confidence and improve their performance. Tutoring focuses on specially identified areas within the subject and high-impact strategies are applied to help at-risk learners. Tailored instructions are delivered to individual students or groups at home or at school.
• Resource room: Fullmind Certified Students with Disabilities Teachers provide specialized instructions in various systematic, accessible formats. The resource room module offers dedicated time to support core class instructions, accelerate individual learning based on needs, and track data for classroom teachers and special education committees.
• State test prep: Fullmind helps students develop essential skills in preparation for admission and placement exams. Students are empowered to prepare, practice, and assess their readiness when working on state and standardized test preparation by identifying and focusing on their individual strengths and weaknesses.
• Homework help: Fullmind certified teachers can help students who need extra assistance for homework assignments. Homework help can be received after school, on weekends, or during scheduled study hall periods. These on-demand drop-in sessions ensure that students stay engaged, build self-reliance, and develop further motivation to excel at their studies.

Virtual Staffing

Fullmind allows schools and school districts to fill openings with highly qualified, state-certified educators in any subject that become a part of the school team. Fullmind classes are given by a live teacher in real-time and fit the school schedule, all year-round. Instructors are integrated within the school community by adhering to the district’s curriculum, participating in parent-teacher conferences, and taking part in professional development.

Fullmind has also successfully placed multiple school psychologists across the country. 

Virtual staffing offers customized solutions that fill short-term and long-term teaching needs for courses of all grades and sizes. Educators teach the school curriculum, provide live instructions, interact with students in real-time, and keep track of student progress in the school’s own technology.

Fullmind Educators 

One of the most important benefits of Fullmind over other virtual education solutions is our pool of experienced, certified educators. All educators go through a rigorous application process that includes a virtual teaching skills demonstration, verification of an active US-state-issued teaching certification and a background check. Fullmind’s Best Practices for Virtual Instruction, a compilation of lessons we’ve learned over the years, is available for our educators as an ongoing resource.

For the highest impact, virtual staff that take on full-time roles teaching at schools are integrated in the faculty community of the school or the school district through daily attendance, staff meetings, and family conferences. In this way, Fullmind ensures that online education gets as close as possible to the experience provided by in-person education.

Fullmind Costs

Fullmind fees are customized to correspond to the services purchased by every school or school district. They are specified in each Order Form. Fees for prepaid educational services are paid in advance and are non-refundable except under the conditions outlined in the Order Form.

Fullmind rates do not include taxes, levies, duties, or other governmental fees. Customers are responsible for paying relevant taxes required in their jurisdiction.

Fullmind Terms

Fullmind works with both schools and school districts across the country to make sure that all students have access to quality education in line with their needs. There are no specific requirements and qualifications for students or schools. Fullmind has the capacity to teach individual students one-on-one, small groups of students, or entire classes. All subjects and all grade levels are available.

Importantly, Fullmind educators are qualified to work with students with different disabilities, English language learners, or students facing various challenges in learning.

The launch process is easy. Once a contract is signed and a start date is confirmed, Fullmind matches the ideal teacher with the school or the school district to provide the required services over the agreed upon time period. As soon as the educator is matched, instructions can begin. It usually takes less than 10 days to get started.

Schools and school districts need to keep in mind that contracts and agreements are non-cancellable as tutor preparation takes a significant amount of time and effort due to the personalized services and approaches.

To cancel a class, schools need to provide a 24-hour advance notice to avoid billing, while students cannot cancel classes on their own.

Fullmind Software

Fullmind virtual classrooms use cutting-edge technology that provides smooth and easy experiences for school districts, schools, and students. Fullmind has a proprietary learning management system (LMS), and the Fullmind Classroom is powered by BigBlueButton, a leading open-source virtual classroom software.

Students receive their own username and password to log into the online system. The safety and confidentiality of student data is maintained and guaranteed in line with all applicable laws.

Fullmind Reviews

Fullmind reviews by school district superintendents and school managers focus on the short timeline to fill vacancies, the ability to provide instructors in low-supply subjects and specializations, and the flexibility that allows schools to continue looking for full-time, in-person teachers. They also appreciate the synchronization with existing school curricula and teaching methods as well as the real-time interactions between the Fullmind teachers, on one hand, and school students, staff, and parents, on the other hand. 

Customers emphasize the expertise of Fullmind in understanding and being familiar with the exact challenges that schools and school districts face and providing comprehensive solutions to these challenges through a strong infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Fullmind has an impressive overall student satisfaction score of 4.3/5, which testifies to the quality of educational and tutoring services provided by the company and its team of teachers.

Fullmind Pros and Cons

Fullmind educational services come with certain advantages and disadvantages.

Fullmind Pros

The main benefits of working with Fullmind for core and supplement instruction as well as virtual staffing cover:

• Decade-long history in diverse online educational services
• Live instruction in real time
• Quick matching between students and instructors, in less than 2 weeks
• Highly qualified, certified instructors
• Educator integration as an embedded member of faculty for virtual staffing
• Customization of teachers, instruction methods, and curriculum to meet each student or group needs
• Flexibility of services that can be scaled up or down
• Result-oriented approach supported by data-backed insights to measure and report student success
• Mimicking of in-person education principles
• Nationwide availability
• Multilingual instructions
• Coverage of all grade levels, subjects, and certification types
• Capacity to work with different types of students, with unique needs
• Custom pricing

Fullmind Cons

Some drawbacks to take into consideration before hiring Fullmind instructors include:

• Unclear pricing structure
• Potential benefits of in-person education over online instruction
• No option for parents and students to hire teachers and get tutoring directly without the school

The advantages of working with Fullmind clearly overweigh the disadvantages, making the platform a top choice for schools across the US.

Fullmind Availability

Fullmind services are available across school districts in all 50 US states. All teachers and instructors are state-certified in addition to holding other relevant certifications. Multilingual instructions are offered to account for regional differences.

The nationwide coverage is in line with Fullmind’s mission to provide every child with access to exceptional education, regardless of their location, background, and needs.

Fullmind Alternatives

Fullmind review shows that the company is able to offer all-in-one solutions to various problems that schools and school districts face. Still, it’s a good idea for those in need of such services to consider different alternatives to make sure that they choose the provider that meets their exact needs.

The main Fullmind competitors include:

Fullmind vs Proximity Learning

Proximity Learning is a Fullmind alternative that offers virtual instructions for K-12, tutoring, and summer school. Teachers are certified, and courses are available in the most popular subjects. Similar to Fullmind, Proximity Learning instructors are hired by schools or school districts and not by individual students and their family which ensures synchronization with classmates.

The main disadvantage of Proximity Learning is that they use their own content when teaching courses at different schools instead of using each school’s own curriculum and educational content. In addition, when providing virtual staffing, the company staffs multiple educators to cover a single teacher’s caseload across all periods for the day instead of one educator (as done by Fullmind). 

These practices can create a wide range of problems when filling temporary staff gaps as the learning process might become disorganized and disrupted. Moreover, Proximity Learning lacks supplement services that address the specific needs of different types of students.

Pricing information is not available on the Proximity Learning website.

Fullmind vs Elevate K-12

Elevate K-12 is a major Fullmind competitor in the e-learning field that provides Tier 1 (core and elective) instruction, special ed instruction, supplemental instruction, and summer school. The company offers more than 80 classes for K-12 grade covering elementary, middle, and high school courses. These include math, ELA, science, social studies, world languages, computer science, test prep, and career readiness. All teachers hold US teaching certification. Elevate K-12 services are not available in Nebraska, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Utah.

The delivery of core instruction by Elevate K-12 is done by a live, online certified teacher provided by the platform but requires a paraprofessional, or a classroom coach, provided by the school/district. While this arrangement is considered necessary for classroom management, it fails to completely solve the growing issue of teacher vacancies. Another drawback of Elevate K-12 services is that they use their own content and curriculum instead of adopting the district’s curriculum which causes discrepancies between in-person and virtually educated students from the same school or district.

Elevate K-12 fees are charged per period, but the range is not provided on the company website.

Fullmind vs AirTutors

AirTutors is one of the main Fullmind competitors in the online tutoring space. However, the company does not provide virtual staffing for core or supplemental instructions. AirTutors teachers are qualified and come from respected educational institutions, but they are not necessarily state-certified. While they cover a wide range of school subjects, it’s not clear whether they have comprehensive coverage in terms of subject area and geographical location. AirTutors offers tutoring one-on-one and in small groups.

The only benefit of AirTutors over Fullmind is that it offers packages for both individual students (families) and educational institutions, while Fullmind works directly with schools and school districts and not with students.

AirTutors pricing for schools is unclear. Meanwhile, the pricing of individual lessons starts at $100/hour, which is rather costly for families.

Fullmind vs Tutored by Teachers

Tutored by Teachers (TbT) is another alternative to Fullmind that provides the following services: vacancy support, tutoring, virtual intervention, SAT test prep, ELL support, and summer academy. Unlike Fullmind, the platform focuses on math and ELA only without offering online instructions in other core subjects. K-12 grade levels are covered.

TbT teachers are US credentialed in math and/or ELA. They are thoroughly vetted before starting working with Tutored by Teachers. However, they are significantly less integrated in the school and student life than Fullmind teachers.

The customers of Tutored by Teachers include school districts and charter schools. TbT fees are not reported.

Bottom Line

A detailed Fullmind review reveals that this is a comprehensive e-learning platform that aims to solve some of the most pressing problems that schools and school districts across the country face, namely teacher shortages and academic challenges experienced by students. The company delivers customizable virtual staffing and core and supplemental instruction services in order to ensure that every student in the US is given access to high-quality education. Pricing is custom to reflect the specific needs of each customer and remain competitive.