Tutor Matching Service is the tutor management platform from Study Edge, a learning science company committed to improving the entire education continuum, from K-12 to college and beyond. For K-12 students specifically, one-on-one tutoring has been shown to have a significant impact on overall student performance.
Nearly $2 billion in federal pandemic aid is landing in the bank accounts of Dallas-area schools to help students recover from the pandemic.
The money — which state leaders announced this spring would flow to Texas schools — has a few strings attached. Districts must spend it on addressing student needs.
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DISD is part of a national collaborative working with researchers at Brown University to study how to maximize the impact of tutoring. Brown’s National Student Support Accelerator points to research showing that tutoring interventions can translate to between three and 15 additional months of learning.
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.
With the return to in-person learning in sight, K-12 leaders are urgently setting priorities for the coming school year. Each spring, educators are eager to find that “just right” approach to their biggest challenges. As a former middle and high school principal, I know that’s especially true after a tough year—and no year has been tougher than this one.
For many leaders, accelerating student learning is top-of-mind, and one method that has garnered a lot of recent attention is high-impact tutoring. The National Student Support Accelerator, founded this year at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University to promote and support high-impact tutoring, defines it as one-to-one or small-group support that supplements classroom learning and complements existing curriculum by focusing on specific goals in response to individual students’ needs. This kind of tutoring is also known as “high-intensity tutoring” or “high-dosage tutoring.”
The Annenberg Institute received a $999,260 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation last month to fund the National Student Support Accelerator. The NSSA research aims to strengthen and grow high-impact tutoring programs and opportunities for K-12 students nationwide. This funding will support the project for two years.
The new National Student Support Accelerator, housed at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, launched to accelerate the growth of high-impact tutoring opportunities for K–12 students in need. The accelerator coordinates and synthesizes tutoring research and uses that research to develop publicly available tools and technical assistance to support districts and schools to develop high-impact tutoring programs for students.
“This is a big infrastructure commitment,” Little said. “Dallas ISD — and no district really — has tried to have that many tutors come in a short amount of time. We’re going to have to be really creative and exhaustive in exploring every avenue to source tutors.”
DISD will partner with Brown University’s National Student Support Accelerator, Little said, as it moves forward. The initiative works to create effective, research-based tutoring programs across the country.
The National Student Success Accelerator’s mission is to expand high-impact tutoring opportunities for all K-12 students in need. The NSSA is a research-based field-building organization that seeks to drive scaling and continual improvement in the quality of tutoring.
The NSSA began with a group of educators convening around the issue of COVID-19 learning loss and the potential of tutoring as a solution. We are currently seeking to hire our founding Executive Director to further lead the organization through its initial organizational development and launching its initial set of programs and services.