Purpose: This document offers tips to help districts design and conduct effective pilot programs for tutoring initiatives. It outlines key steps to ensure programs align with goals, address challenges, and build stakeholder buy-in before scaling.
A Pilot Program is beneficial because it allows the program to:
Purpose: Choosing an appropriate tutor involves assessing expertise, availability levels, and cost implications to meet specific district needs. This guidance enables districts to make decisions that support program objectives while staying within budget limits and scaling appropriately.
Types of Tutors Overview
Purpose: Use this checklist to ensure that the seven evidenced-based elements of high-impact tutoring are included in your criteria. The list serves as a starting point and will need to be adapted to fit the context and needs of your district or state.
Tutor
Purpose: This one-pager helps district leaders make the case for high-impact tutoring with local government and community partners. It provides leaders with messaging to show the benefits of tutoring from the perspective of community partners and local government and invest them in supporting this initiative.
Purpose: Educators are an essential part of an effective tutoring program. See the guidelines and resources below to support strong educator collaboration:
Maintaining interest and attendance in a high-impact tutoring program requires deliberate action. A strong relationship between the tutor and student is built through regular attendance and becomes the foundation of the social-emotional benefits, increased motivation, and academic success experienced in high-impact tutoring. Attendance is most easily secured when students are tutored within the classroom environment, while other models may need to utilize more of these recommendations.
High-impact tutoring has the strongest impact when it works in tandem with the rest of the students’ educational efforts. While some decisions about tutoring program design are straightforward, others require finesse to ensure the tutoring amplifies and enhances student learning that is already taking place in Tier I instruction. Furthermore, pressure testing these decisions in a pilot can save the district money and prevent stakeholder frustration because changes can be made swiftly on a small-scale.
With the growing emphasis on high-impact tutoring, more providers are aligning their offerings with research-based best practices. The optimal tutoring provider for your school will not only meet the rigorous standards of high-impact tutoring but also offer the resources and strengths you need, all while seamlessly integrating into your school’s culture. Section 4.3 equips you with recommendations for provider comparison and selection.
Now that you have envisioned your ideal tutoring provider, it's time to bring that vision to life by identifying a real-world counterpart. A provider might be selected from database searches/current partnerships or a more formalized sourcing procedure. A Request for Proposal (RFP) is a strategic tool to navigate complex projects, budget constraints, or competitive providers to ensure your students get the best possible service.