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.
Filling out the Pre-Assessment Checklist below can help you identify what content in this Playbook will be most helpful based on where you are in the process of establishing a tutoring program. If planning hasn’t started, this Pre-Assessment can help build consensus about the steps needed to plan a High-Impact Tutoring program and ensure that your district’s stakeholders are willing and able to implement it successfully.
Who is the intended audience for the Playbook?
This Playbook is designed for school district staff interested in implementing High-Impact Tutoring in their districts. While district staff members are the primary audience, state educational officials and school administrators will also be able to leverage many of the resources in the Playbook.
How was the Playbook designed?
This Playbook describes how to implement a High-Impact Tutoring program in your district or school and why it is worthwhile to do so. First, though, it is important to define what High-Impact Tutoring is and how it differs from other less effective types of tutoring.
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.
The American Rescue Plan requires states to spend at least 5 percent of the money allotted for K-12 schools— about $6 billion nationwide—on helping students make up for lost instructional time. Similarly, local school districts must spend at least 20 percent of their allocation on this objective. High-impact tutoring is an evidence based strategy proven to boost academic achievement, social-emotional development, and other outcomes. While tutoring can take many forms and often includes a mentoring component, Brown University’s National Student Support Accelerator defines high-impact tutoring as “a form of teaching, one-on-one or in a small group, toward a specific goal” that supplements, but does not replace, classroom instruction.