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Overview: Why should you create guidance for which students receive tutoring?

All students can benefit from high-impact tutoring, but you will probably need to prioritize which students receive this tutoring, at least in the short-run. Once you have chosen a focus area (subject and grade level) and identified partner schools for your program, the next step is to select which students at each school will receive tutoring. The district should create overall guidelines for schools to make these decisions.

Overview: Why should you be selective about your program’s schools?

Choosing schools whose communities are fully invested in your program’s success will help you optimize your model more quickly. Prioritizing the schools whose students need tutoring most will ensure that your program can make a meaningful impact at any scale.

What criteria should you consider when selecting your program’s schools?

Does this school need this program?

Implement High-Impact Tutoring

• Overview: Why should you be selective about your program’s schools?
• What criteria should you consider when selecting your program’s schools?

Selecting Students

• Overview: Why should you create guidance for which students receive tutoring?
• What criteria should you consider when selecting students?

Scheduling Sessions

Overview: Why is tutor training and support important?

Tutor training is required to fill gaps between your selection criteria and your ideal tutor’s qualities. While the level of training required depends on tutor experience and student-tutor ratio, pre-service training alone will not be sufficient. All tutor types perform better with direction and coaching.

Overview: How do you build an effective and diverse cohort of tutors?

Your tutors are your program’s most important asset. To find the best tutors for the role, you must clearly define required qualifications and ideal qualities, prioritize them based on your district context and program model, and design an intentional recruitment and selection strategy to build a diverse cohort of tutors that will meet your scale goals while remaining within your tutoring program’s budget.

Overview: What does Model Design involve?

Model Design involves several steps including understanding the needs of your district by conducting a District Landscape Analysis< developing a logic model to map how your program will address these needs and then making a series of consistent and coherent choices along various model design dimensions based on this information. Conducting a District Landscape Analysis is covered in Section 1: Lay the Foundation.

Overview: What does grow your own tutoring program mean?

You may opt to build a new program from the ground up, leveraging the existing systems in your district and the talent pool in your community. Both with regard to program design and implementation, when a district grows its own program it has more choices to make; with this greater autonomy comes greater control over outcomes, but also greater risk of implementing ineffective practices.

Overview: Why is it important to collaborate with your tutoring provider?

Your district’s degree of collaboration with a provider will depend on the program model and the level of logistics and support needed from the district to implement the program. Ideally, a tutoring provider will operate as a strategic partner, supporting the district to continuously reflect and improve upon the tutoring program.

Overview: Why is it important to have a contract?

Most districts will require formal contracts to be in place before work with a provider can begin, but even if your district does not, an agreement or Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) should be in place before work begins. This helps you and your provider align your expectations and incentives at the outset, preemptively solving problems before they arise.

Before drawing up your contract, check your district’s policies for any limitations on the following:

Overview: How do you plan for issuing an RFP?

An RFP may be required depending on the scale of your program and the regulations in your district. If so, understanding the approval process is critical. Some districts may require approval from the school board, while others may allow district employees to sign off.

Overview: What are the key steps to selecting a provider?

Thousands of organizations identify themselves as tutoring organizations, but few will be a strong match for your district’s needs. Selecting a provider can be straightforward by following the steps outlined in this section and using the provided tools. You can start by identifying potential providers on the National Student Support Accelerator’s website or by using a request for proposal process.

Overview: Why is partnering with a provider a good option?

High-Impact Tutoring programs are difficult to design and implement effectively. When possible, relying on an organization with a track record of doing both successfully can increase the likelihood that your own district’s tutoring program will be successful. Your Focus Area for tutoring is largely determined by the unmet needs in your own district; these needs may represent gaps in your district’s expertise or implementation.

Once you have completed initial planning, the next critical task is designing the tutoring program. Districts may choose to partner with a tutoring provider and use the provider’s program design, design and grow their own tutoring program or pursue a hybrid approach. If you have not done so already, learn more about how to choose an approach for your district in Tutoring Approach: Partner with a Provider, Grow Your Own Program or Hybrid?

Overview: Why does stakeholder investment matter?

Tutoring programs rely on diverse groups of stakeholders: not just the students and caregivers the program serves and the tutors, teachers, and administrators who implement it, but also the district superintendents and local government who approve budgets and the other community partners who support the program. If any of these groups are not invested in your program, successful implementation becomes more difficult.

Overview: How do you source and sustain funding for High-Impact Tutoring?

Significant funding is available to fund tutoring programs. This section outlines funding sources district leaders can consider as they determine how to financially support their tutoring program as well as key considerations that can help district leaders decide how to approach funding.

Overview: How should you estimate your program’s budget?

When implemented effectively, tutoring programs can have a significant impact on student outcomes, making these programs well worth the investment of time and funding. It is important for your district to fully understand the costs of running an effective tutoring program and determine how that program will be funded. Costs estimates for high-impact tutoring programs range considerably from $1,000 to over $3,000 per pupil.

Click Here to go to the Accelerator-Designed Tutoring Survey Instruments

Overview: How do data drive improvement?

Collecting and analyzing data lets you make improvements in a targeted, strategic way. It allows your program to:

Overview: Which staffing decisions matter most?

Regardless of your approach to implementing tutoring, your district must make four main decisions that will impact the level of centralized capacity and staffing needed:

Overview: Why is planning ahead important?

Successful implementation of High-Impact tutoring requires planning the process in detail ahead of time. The tool below includes a series of checklists to keep track of the steps needed to get tutoring up and running in your district. It also includes rough timeline estimates, though these will vary depending on the size of your district, the needs of your community, and the scope of your tutoring program.

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. This Workbook is designed to accompany High-Impact Tutoring: District Playbook and is for school district staff interested in implementing High-Impact Tutoring programs in their districts.

Planning for High-Impact Tutoring

• Overview: Why is planning ahead important?
• Preliminary Question Checklist 
• Planning Timeline Checklist 
• How should you design and conduct a pilot program?

Understanding Central Capacity and Staffing Needs 

Overview: What are the different tutoring approaches?

Once you have set clear goals for your tutoring program, you need to determine how your district will approach the day-to-day implementation of High-Impact Tutoring. Three approaches are common:

Partnering with a Provider

Overview: Why do you need to define goals at the outset?

Your goals inform your program’s design and implementation.
Rigorously defined and monitored goals keep decision-making focused, provide a framework to demonstrate progress and success to stakeholders, and indicate where improvement is needed.

Overview: Why is alignment with district priorities important?

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:

Overview: What is a Focus Area?

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 

• Overview: Why should you assemble a Task Force?
• How often should the Task Force meet?
• Who should be on the Task Force?
• What should the Task Force prioritize?

Identifying a Focus Area

Overview: Why should you 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.

Overview: Where should you start?

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.

How does this playbook work?

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?

What is High-Impact Tutoring?

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.