As you design a tutoring program, you will have numerous decisions to make that influence and impact one another. On the left column of the table below are Model Dimensions of tutoring programs; on the right are corresponding Considerations that allow you to contemplate how interactions among model design decisions may impact your tutoring program.
Program Focus
With a clear program focus, value proposition, logic model, cost estimate and initial model dimension decisions, you can begin implementation. The toolkit provides implementation guidance and tools for each of the seven elements of high-impact tutoring. The Tool Appendix gives the full range of tools.
A Value Proposition is a concise articulation of the value an organization delivers should someone choose to use their program. It consists of two core components: the Challenge (or unmet need) that the program intends to address and the Approach that states how the program provides value to address that challenge. It distinguishes the program from other seemingly similar programs by highlighting what makes its approach uniquely well-suited to solving a specific problem or particularly efficient at meeting a specific unmet need.
Whether you are designing a new program or seeking to improve an existing one, deeply understanding your program’s value proposition, logic model and the landscape in which your program operates will help to focus your efforts most beneficially. This analysis and resulting understanding will provide the foundation and context needed to design a cohesive, high-impact tutoring program.
Designing a program is best done iteratively. Here is a suggested process:
The original form of personalized learning — tutoring — is about to take a giant step forward. Pandemic-era learning loss has motivated a group of national education leaders to develop an initiative to make "high-impact tutoring" available to all K-12 students, no matter whether their families can afford tutoring or not. When the National Student Support Accelerator, launched by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, is fully running, it will consist of several components...
Into this breach has stepped the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, which late last week announced the launch of its National School Support Accelerator. Partly a hands-on tutoring initiative and partly a research project, Annenberg is funding a variety of demonstration tutoring sites throughout the United States to study and refine what we know about tutoring. Eventually, it wants to spin off the project into its own organization.
"The trick, I think, is that when you scale something it's not as good as it is initially," said Susanna Loeb, the director of the Annenberg Institute. "How can we be careful so it scales at quality? What kind of resources are available so we know that it's quality, and they're doing it in a way that the research shows is most effective? That's really what this organization is aiming to do."