Once you have identified the schools where tutoring will happen and selected the students who will receive it, you are ready to tackle the logistical challenge of scheduling when and where your program’s tutoring sessions will take place.
All students can benefit from high-impact tutoring, but you will probably need to prioritize which students receive this tutoring, at least in the short-run. Once you have chosen a focus area (subject and grade level) and identified partner schools for your program, the next step is to select which students at each school will receive tutoring. The district should create overall guidelines for schools to make these decisions.
Choosing schools whose communities are fully invested in your program’s success will help you optimize your model more quickly. Prioritizing the schools whose students need tutoring most will ensure that your program can make a meaningful impact at any scale.
Does this school need this program?
Implement High-Impact Tutoring
Selecting Students
Scheduling Sessions
Tutor training is required to fill gaps between your selection criteria and your ideal tutor’s qualities. While the level of training required depends on tutor experience and student-tutor ratio, pre-service training alone will not be sufficient. All tutor types perform better with direction and coaching.
Your tutors are your program’s most important asset. To find the best tutors for the role, you must clearly define required qualifications and ideal qualities, prioritize them based on your district context and program model, and design an intentional recruitment and selection strategy to build a diverse cohort of tutors that will meet your scale goals while remaining within your tutoring program’s budget.
Model Design involves several steps including understanding the needs of your district by conducting a District Landscape Analysis< developing a logic model to map how your program will address these needs and then making a series of consistent and coherent choices along various model design dimensions based on this information. Conducting a District Landscape Analysis is covered in Section 1: Lay the Foundation.
You may opt to build a new program from the ground up, leveraging the existing systems in your district and the talent pool in your community. Both with regard to program design and implementation, when a district grows its own program it has more choices to make; with this greater autonomy comes greater control over outcomes, but also greater risk of implementing ineffective practices.
Your district’s degree of collaboration with a provider will depend on the program model and the level of logistics and support needed from the district to implement the program. Ideally, a tutoring provider will operate as a strategic partner, supporting the district to continuously reflect and improve upon the tutoring program.
Most districts will require formal contracts to be in place before work with a provider can begin, but even if your district does not, an agreement or Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) should be in place before work begins. This helps you and your provider align your expectations and incentives at the outset, preemptively solving problems before they arise.
Before drawing up your contract, check your district’s policies for any limitations on the following: