Planning for High-Impact Tutoring

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.

At the start, the stability and scalability of your program should be a priority. The plan for tutoring should include a multi-year time horizon with an eye toward developing the evidence base to support integrating high-impact tutoring into the district’s educational program for the long-term. Rushing to implement tutoring at a large scale without a clear plan for learning and adjusting can lead to stopgap “solutions” that don’t work at scale. If you take time to systematize your program’s operations from the start, you will be able to scale better.

Don’t be afraid to make seemingly unrealistic overestimates of the time required to do the work well. In a process with many moving parts, unexpected delays happen often. A truly realistic plan accounts for this possibility beforehand. No estimate will be exactly right; make sure that all your estimates are “wrong in the right direction,” i.e., overestimates, not underestimates.

Preliminary Question Checklist

Use these questions to get a basic sense of how long it will take to get your program set up and help determine whether to use the longer or shorter time estimates for each step of the planning timeline on the following page.

Funding. Where is the money to support this program coming from? How long will it take to secure it?
- What Federal funding is available for this program? When will these funds be available?
- What existing funding can you reallocate? How long will it take to get this reallocation approved?
- Will you need to apply for funding? How extensive and time-sensitive are these applications?
- Will you need to research new funding prospects? How long might it take to find enough funds?
Approval. Will you need Board of Education approval? How long does that typically take in your district?
Issuing RFPs and Awarding Contracts. Will you need an RFP? How long will awarding the contract take?
- If Working with a Provider: How big is the contract? Is it big enough to require an RFP? How many providers must you consider? Do providers have the approval they need to work in your district?
- If Growing Your Own: Even if you will be recruiting your own tutors, will you contract out any services (e.g., recruitment, training, or technical assistance)? Does this require an RFP process?
Access. What systems and data will tutors need to access? How long will it take to get them set up?
- School Accounts. What accounts (email, videoconferencing, etc.) will tutors need to get set up?
- Student Academic Data. What student data do tutors need to access? How will they access it?
- School Curricula. What needs to be in place for tutors to access school curricula and materials?
If Growing Your Own: Recruiting. Without a provider, how long will it take you to find your own tutors?
- Scope and Scale. What qualifications will tutors need, and how many will you need to hire? Consider the following:
  - More qualified tutors may take longer to recruit, but less time to train and supervise.
  - If your tutors need extra skills or language proficiencies, build in extra recruitment time.
  - The better you pay your tutors relative to their qualifications, the faster you can recruit.
- Hiring Process. With which departments (e.g., HR) will you need to work on the hiring process?

Planning Timeline Checklist

Lay the Foundation: Program Selection and Initial Design Phase (1-12 weeks, 6-15 hours per week)

Assemble the Task Force
Conduct a landscape analysis of your district’s current programs, needs, and opportunities
Determine your program’s focus area, scale (number of students, tutors, schools) and high-level goals
Based on your scale and goals, decide to partner with a provider or grow your own program

Plan for Effective Operations: Planning, Budgeting and Funding Phase (1-3 weeks, 2-5 hours per week)

Identify a project manager and develop a project plan for the tutoring initiative
Develop budget and identify when applicable Federal funding will become available to your district
Examine existing budget to identify funding you can reallocate quickly towards tutoring programs
Research applications for external funding (e.g., charitable grants) and complete applications on time
Identify stakeholders that you will need to invest in tutoring and build an investment plan

RFP If Required (2-4 weeks, 15-30 hours per week)

Determine whether an RFP is required
If so, follow district RFP guidelines for the RFP process: number of providers to consider, approval process to work in your district, etc.

Provider Selection (2-10 weeks, 4-6 hours per week)

Research different providers’ models
Meet with providers to learn more
Select one provider for partnership
Agree on customizations for your district

Partnership Contract (2-4 weeks, 1-8 hours per week)

Draw up a contract with the provider
Adjust contract as necessary
Obtain board approval for contract
Finalize and sign contract with provider

District Data Systems (1-5 weeks, 4-15 hours per week)

Align with provider on the data-collection plan
Set up student data sharing with provider
Integrate provider’s digital data management systems with district’s existing systems
Identify any other systems tutors will need to access, and find ways to get them that access

Design for Impact: Growing Your Own Program:

Model Design (2-10 weeks, 4-10 hours per week)

Determine your own model design dimensions
Create guidance for selecting students/tutors
Develop a Performance Management Plan

Tutor Recruitment (2 weeks, 2-10 hours per week)

Set a hiring window with deadlines
Write and publish tutor job description
Advertise job posting to speed up timeline
Start designing tutor training to fill all gaps between “eligible applicant” and “ideal tutor”

Tutor Selection (1 week, 10 hours per candidate)

Determine and prioritize selection criteria
Identify indicators of selection criteria
Conduct interviews/model lessons/etc.
Analyze indicators and choose candidates

Tutor Hiring (1 week, 10 hours per tutor hired)

Draft tutor contracts and make job offers
Process HR, payroll, background checks, etc.
Follow district policies for fingerprinting, etc.

Tutor Training (1-3 weeks, 4-5 hours per tutor hired)

Adjust training based on hired tutor skill levels
Provide all necessary preservice training

Implement High-Impact Tutoring:

School Selection Phase (1-4 weeks, 1-10 hours per week per school)

Meet with schools and network chiefs to introduce the program
Identify which schools and students will receive tutoring and why
Communicate new partnership with school community stakeholders (faculty, students, and caregivers)

School Logistics Phase (2-3 weeks, 2-10 hours per week per school)

Meet with school administrators to schedule sessions: which weekdays, class periods, classrooms, etc.
Establish backup days, times, and locations for tutoring in case regular schedule is disrupted
Meet with department heads to refine which students will work with tutors
Meet with teachers’ union representatives to determine compensation structure for teacher support
Provide compensated onboarding sessions to introduce the tutoring program to key teachers
Choose a primary point of contact at each school and clearly establish responsibilities of the role
Designate a caregiver liaison as the primary point of contact for caregivers with questions about tutoring

Tutor Logistics Phase (2-3 weeks, 2-10 hours per week per school)

Arrange for tutors to attend summer PD days to get to know teachers and observe school culture
Set up school email/productivity suite accounts for tutors and get access to all necessary student data
Arrange for tutors to gain access to teacher curriculum and lesson planning materials ahead of time
Delineate responsibilities for absences: who does what if a student is absent? If a tutor is absent?
Establish workflow for school leaders to sign off on tutor timesheets

Implementation Monitoring Phase (Ongoing)

Plan and schedule regular inservice training sessions to build tutors’ pedagogical skills
Provide inservice training and coaching for each of your tutors
Provide incentives for tutors to chaperone school trips/activities to integrate into school culture
Schedule routine check-ins, professional development days, and professional learning communities
Conduct regular post-assessments to measure student academic progress as the program scales
Collect qualitative stakeholder feedback via surveys, focus groups, interviews, etc. at planned intervals
Establish routine data reviews to monitor impact per tutor, per school, and for the program as a whole
Draft and present reports to relevant district authorities (i.e., School Board) to illustrate program impact

How should you design and conduct a pilot program?

What is a pilot program?

A pilot program is a small-scale implementation of your program, reducing your program’s scale and cost but not changing core elements of the program model. Pilot programs can help you to test and improve your model before scaling up.

What are the goals of a pilot program?

Start simple at a small scale to find and fix the practical problems. Think of your pilot program as a “minimum viable product.” Problems with model design and implementation are most concentrated in the first six weeks of tutoring, so solve these challenges before scaling up.

Test assumptions and improve implementation. By starting small, you can quickly gather data on both the effectiveness of your design and the nitty-gritty implementation challenges it faces. Document your problems and solutions as you work and use these data to guide your full-scale implementation.

Find high value uses of resources before spending at scale. Instead of pouring your resources into large-scale projects right away, identify what works best first, and invest district-wide only in those effective practices.

Provide proof points to motivate growth. Show that and how your program works, and stakeholders at all levels will be willing to provide the time, resources, funding, and buy-in that you need to scale it up (see example).

How does designing a pilot program work?

Every pilot program starts with a target population (the subset of your district who will participate in the pilot) and a research question (the question that you aim to answer based on the results and impact of the pilot).

Use these tips to plan your pilot, and refer to City Bridge’s Pilot Program Design Sprint Tool for more detail.

Target Population Tips:

Pick a single content area/grade level, and select the students who need tutoring the most urgently.
Run your pilot in at least 3 schools (of varying sizes, if possible) to evaluate feasibility and impact. Larger districts may need larger pilot sizes or phased expansions of the target population.
Select enthusiastic partner schools and teachers who are eager to test out different models and who want to provide feedback along the way.

Research Question Tips:

Pick specific questions with testable answers, like: “Is it feasible for tutors and teachers to collaboratively plan during common prep time twice a week, or is that too difficult to schedule?”
Identify both qualitative and quantitative metrics that align with what you want to learn, such as teachers’ or tutors’ self-reported experiences with tutoring or student academic trends.
Choose a timeline based on the scale of your question: e.g., 2 weeks for initial feasibility, 2 months for satisfaction, and an entire semester to test impact on student outcomes.