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Susanna Loeb from the National Student Support Accelerator shares research, best practices, and resources educators can use when implementing high-impact tutoring at their LEAs.

“The type of tutoring with evidence is intensive tutoring with a consistent tutor who comes with an understanding of the students needs — based on data from direct assessments or from the school or teacher — and with curricular materials for addressing these needs,” Susanna Loeb, the director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University, said in an email.

Tutoring using the Orton Gillingham method to help improve student's reading and spelling skills.

Tutor Matching Service has developed an online tutoring platform called GoBoard. It combines video conferencing, an interactive canvas, and education tools like a graphing calculator, an equation editor, molecular bonds creator, and much more. In addition, there is a reference library with subject-specific tools, including math, physics, chemistry, business, and more. GoBoard also features a first-of-its-kind ability to text in a photo of handwritten work or textbook pages directly into a collaborative board for others in the session to then mark up in real-time.

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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Techfunic offers personalized online co-learning for children resulting in higher STEM proficiency. Your child interacts with live friends and tutors, not lifeless videos. Techfunic matches a maximum of 3 children with a tutor, creating small pods ensuring participative engagement in all children, resulting in higher grades, social skills and confidence in children over-time and enhancing their self-esteem.

A Yancy Life brings an innovative blended math, science, and reading assistance program that combines classroom instruction with computer-aided learning. Study Island, a Web-based standards mastery program, is the basis of Yancy's instruction in English/Language Arts (ELA), Math and Science. While each student is given log in credentials, and Study Island is, in itself, a full on-line instructional program for individual learning, student use of Study Island is limited during daily instruction.

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.

Overview: Why are continuous improvement systems critical to sustainability?

All tutoring programs and especially new tutoring programs need improvement. Continuous improvement systems allow you to gather, act on and share the information needed to reach and exceed program goals and inform and build support from stakeholders.

Overview: How do you identify causes and solutions to poor enrollment or attendance?

This section offers solutions to common challenges concerning student enrollment and attendance. Use the recommendations proactively to establish systems early: enrollment and attendance are non-negotiable necessities for a tutoring program to succeed, and they do not happen automatically.

What is a District Landscape Analysis?

A Landscape Analysis outlines the strengths, resources, and needs of a particular school district. It provides a framework for designing a service and ensuring that it is embedded directly in the needs of the district.

Overview: How can districts and schools work together to schedule tutoring into the school day?

Once you have identified the schools where tutoring will happen and selected the students who will receive it, you are ready to tackle the logistical challenge of scheduling when and where your program’s tutoring sessions will take place.

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.