Statewide Tutoring Efforts

Today, Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) announced a new round of grant and contract awards totaling more than $7 million to fund high-impact tutoring (HIT) programs for over 6,000 students across 90 DC Public Schools and public charter schools during the 2024-25 school year. This strategic investment includes $4.3 million in grants to 16 DC local education agencies (LEAs) and over $3 million in contracts with 11 qualified HIT providers and one strategic supports partner.  

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In the past five years, the Texas district’s investments in staffing and high dosage tutoring are paying off.

That’s why the district piloted a virtual tutoring program in the 2020-21 school year. Middle school students were the first to participate. In spring 2021, the live virtual tutoring program expanded to serve 6,000 students in K-12, he said.

That same spring, Ector County ISD designated $10 million of its $93 million in federal pandemic relief funds to tutoring over the next three years, according to a report by university-based research nonprofits FutureEd and the National Student Support Accelerator.

“It’s much more than just the dosage that makes the difference in this type of tutoring,” said Kathy Bendheim, the director of strategic advising for the National Student Support Accelerator, which studies tutoring models. “You do it with a consistent tutor, and it’s not homework help—it’s intentional instruction based on data about where that student is on their academic journey and what their specific instructional needs are.”

In-school tutoring is most effective, researchers say

When considering which programs to fund, Indiana should consider what research says about high-impact tutoring programs, said Nancy Waymack, director of research partnerships and policy for Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator, which provides resources for districts implementing tutoring programs.

High-impact tutoring is delivered one-on-one or in small groups by consistent and well-trained tutors. It happens during the school day up to five days a week, integrated with classroom instruction.

Indiana Learns requires parents to apply for the grant and then schedule and bring their children to lessons. The grant expanded in 2023 to allow tutoring during certain blocks of the school day, such as lunchtime, but it’s not clear how widespread that option is.

Since 2022, public schools in the District of Columbia have been working to mitigate Covid learning disruptions by establishing and ramping up high-impact tutoring (HIT) efforts. Data on the outcome of these efforts are beginning to emerge, and a new report from the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) shows some minimally encouraging signs.

NSSA is an offshoot of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and Systems Change for Advancing Learning and Equity, an initiative focused on researching how tutoring can best benefit students. Its new report looks at the first full year of HIT implementation in D.C. schools during 2022–23. Tutoring efforts that year concentrated on math and English language arts (ELA) for students in all grades and was focused on schools—both district and charter—with the greatest concentrations of students identified as at risk. It’s interesting to note that “at risk” doesn’t generally mean academic risk for schools in the district, but rather centers primarily on student socioeconomic status and homelessness, in the context of this wholly-academic intervention. Pre-existing academic need appears not to have been a driving force in choosing where tutors were placed, although some data suggest that academic performance may have influenced teachers’ decisions on which students to refer for tutoring.

The Bay Area Tutoring Association (BATA) is proud to host Silicon Valley High Dosage Tutoring Summit, a groundbreaking event designed to elevate the conversation on this critical academic intervention.

BATA is scheduled to host the Silicon Valley High Dosage Tutoring Summit on Friday October 11, 2024, at the Santa Clara County Office of Education. The summit will bring together various stakeholders including educators, policymakers, researchers, parent advocates, and funding organizations. Click here to register

New research from Stanford University has brought a ray of hope for Washington, D.C.’s students, especially Black children and those from low-income families. The research revealed that the city’s substantial investment in a tutoring initiative has borne fruit in its first year, significantly boosting academic performance and narrowing the persistent gaps in reading and math that have disproportionately affected these groups.