Regardless of your approach to implementing tutoring, your district must make four main decisions that will impact the level of centralized capacity and staffing needed:
Successful implementation of High-Impact tutoring requires planning the process in detail ahead of time. The tool below includes a series of checklists to keep track of the steps needed to get tutoring up and running in your district. It also includes rough timeline estimates, though these will vary depending on the size of your district, the needs of your community, and the scope of your tutoring program.
Research shows that High-Impact Tutoring is unusually effective for accelerating student learning. In fact it is more effective than other interventions that have been tested and is effective across grade and content levels. This Workbook is designed to accompany High-Impact Tutoring: District Playbook and is for school district staff interested in implementing High-Impact Tutoring programs in their districts.
Planning for High-Impact Tutoring
Once you have set clear goals for your tutoring program, you need to determine how your district will approach the day-to-day implementation of High-Impact Tutoring. Three approaches are common:
Your goals inform your program’s design and implementation.
Rigorously defined and monitored goals keep decision-making focused, provide a framework to demonstrate progress and success to stakeholders, and indicate where improvement is needed.
Tutoring is most effective when it is integrated into a broader strategy addressing district priorities, positioned as core to each school’s instructional model rather than as a disconnected and optional add-on.
Fully embedding tutoring also helps you build stakeholder engagement:
Your program’s Focus Area is the content area and/or grade level that you will prioritize for tutoring. Identifying a Focus Area is the first step in planning a tutoring program, and it requires answering these essential questions:
Foundation: Assemble a Task Force
A successful High-Impact Tutoring program requires coordinated collaboration across departments and at different levels of the district hierarchy, from teachers and tutors to the district leadership. Input and buy-in from experts at these levels make the program more sustainable.