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.
How often should the Task Force meet?
No less than 1 hour every 2 weeks. Meet weekly if possible, especially if you aim to accelerate your timeline, and expect to meet more frequently (i.e., twice per week) during the final month before the program’s launch. Once the program has launched, the task force may scale back to quarterly check-ins or disband entirely.
Who should be on the Task Force?
Depending on the size of your district, your Task Force may only need a handful of members, or it may involve many stakeholders from different constituencies. Any Task Force needs representatives from at least these three key groups:
- Highly effective teachers, particularly in literacy and math. These are your most important experts; prioritize their input. Teachers know their students best, and their pedagogical expertise is the foundation of effective tutoring. Identify your district’s most impactful teachers and prioritize bringing them on board.
- Instructional coaches and support staff. These are your proactive troubleshooters, catching potential barriers to implementation during the design phase and suggesting solutions to address them.
- School administrators and district representatives. These are your organizers and ambassadors, ensuring that everyone knows what resources and budgets are available, holding people to deadlines, and liaising with your district’s established power structures and professional networks. Typical district-level departments that should be represented on a Task Force include Teaching and Learning, Curriculum and Academics, English Language Learner[1] (ELL) Services, Special Education and the Superintendent (or Superintendent’s office).
- Parent and/or student representative. These are your engagement allies, ensuring the program is designed and communicated in ways to maximize positive engagement.
The Task Force needs a leader who has decision making powers or has direct access to and support from who can make final decisions. This person may also be the project manager. All members of the task force should have clearly articulated roles and responsibilities. As with all additional responsibilities, it is important to consider additional compensation when warranted.
Note: If your goal is to build a strong program from the ground up, you must reverse the usual hierarchies. For your program to operate smoothly during the implementation phase, your design phase must prioritize the perspectives of the people who will, collectively, play the biggest role in its day-to-day implementation: educators who work directly with students.
What should the Task Force prioritize?
The rest of this Playbook provides a roadmap to guide your Task Force through each aspect of program planning. The first task is to identify the Focus Area for your tutoring program, set initial goals, and determine your approach (i.e., will you develop your own program, work with a provider, or implement a hybrid of both models).
Once you have completed these initial steps, consider forming subcommittees to focus on separate aspects of the design process (depending on the size of your task force and the scale of your program). Allocating responsibilities allows you to speed up your timeline, though at the cost of a larger team that can be more complex to coordinate and costlier to compensate. Additionally, you may decide to add representatives to the task force once you have greater clarity on your approach and how it will impact other departments. See the list of typical departments that may be involved in the implementation of tutoring.
[1] Note: This Playbook recognizes that there are a variety of terms used for students who need support in learning the English language including Multilingual Learners, English Learners, Limited English Proficient Students, and others. We use ELL to represent all of these terms.