Understanding Central Capacity and Staffing Needs

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:

  • Project Management: Which tasks will require a central project manager?
  • Hiring and Compensation: How will you identify and compensate your project manager?
  • Scale: How will your program’s scale impact the support needed to implement tutoring?
  • Cross-Departmental Collaboration: When will departments need to collaborate, and why?

Which tasks will require a central project manager?

A successful district-wide tutoring program requires a central project manager to take responsibility for key tasks. Regardless of your tutoring approach, your district will need a central staff member to manage the following:

  • Articulate the vision and strategy for the tutoring program
  • Coordinate across departments implementing the tutoring program to meet goals
  • Manage stakeholder communication and cultivate relationships across the district
  • Serve as a champion and advocate for High-Impact Tutoring in the district

After that, a few differences will be required based on your tutoring approach:

Partnering with a Provider Growing your Own
Project manager is the head relationship manager, ensuring the program runs smoothly district-wide. Project manager is the head program manager, ensuring the program is designed, implemented, and improved effectively and efficiently district-wide.
  • Lead a Task Force to identify, vet, and select the best provider for your district
  • Manage the relationship with the provider
  • Lead collaboration and synthesize feedback from other departments for the provider
  • Support school leaders in anticipating logistics and operations to run tutoring at school sites (e.g., scheduling tutoring into the school day)
  • Provide support directly to school leaders to troubleshoot challenges and make continuous improvements
  • Lead a Task Force to determine the tutoring program model and design
  • Plan for and collaborate with HR to recruit, design a selection process and hire tutors
  • Develop curriculum and instructional tools
  • Design and implement training for tutors
  • Collaborate with data and analytics to set outcomes and develop data analysis tools to measure programming effectiveness
  • Depending on scale, manage an operations lead who will handle school-level logistics

How will you identify and compensate your project manager?

Regardless of your tutoring approach, consider the costs and benefits associated with appointing a project manager for this work. The project manager will work outside the scope of their normal role and devote significant time and capacity to your tutoring program, so it may be necessary to update their job title to reflect these new responsibilities and increase their pay to reflect this additional work. When creating the project manager role and identifying candidates, your districts should consider the following guidance outlined by the Score Institute (page 6):

  • Can this work be completed as part of an existing role, or does a part-time or full-time staff member need to be hired? (See scale guidance below.)
  • If the work will be part of an existing role, does the person currently in this role have the time and capacity to lead a tutoring program team?
    • If not, can duties in their existing role be reassigned to someone else? To whom?
  • How will you ensure the project manager has the autonomy and flexibility to make strategic decisions and adjust course quickly? What support will this person need to be able to lead the tutoring program team?

How will your program’s scale impact the support needed to implement tutoring?

If you are operating at a smaller scale (e.g., providers serving under 2,000 students or homegrown programs serving under 300), you may be able to implement tutoring using 25-50% of a Full-Time Employee’s time. As the number of students served increases, you will likely need someone in a full-time role, and maybe even more than one person.

To ensure that you have the capacity to implement tutoring effectively, consider creating a permanent “Tutoring Team” within your central district staff to plan, launch, and monitor the effectiveness of tutoring. This team will definitely be needed if you grow your own program and operate at a large scale. Even districts partnering with providers may need a full team, depending on the number of students served and the number of provider partnerships to manage.

Refer to the example staffing models below for guidance:

District 1 District 2
Tutoring Scale: 20,000 students Tutoring Scale: 5,000 students
Location: Urban Location: Suburban
Model: Working with several providers Model: Grow your Own
Staffing Model:
  • 1 Director: Provides strategic oversight, oversees RFP process and manages Coordinators
  • 4 Coordinators: Oversee tutoring initiative across each of the four regions in the district. Each coordinator will oversee the tutoring program and staff in their region, and will directly work with regional leadership to ensure effectiveness of tutoring.
Staffing Model:
  • 1 Director: Provides strategic oversight and manages Coordinators and overall program
  • 2 Coordinators: Jointly oversee the design of the program and each coordinator is assigned specific schools to oversee tutors and implementation
  • 1 Office Manager: Handles logistics and provides support to the team
Estimated Costs (Salary + Benefits)*:

$440,000 -$550,00

Estimated Costs (Salary + Benefits)*: $290,000-$400,000

*Estimated costs were calculated by identifying the salary range of each position (Director, Coordinator, etc.) for the district and adding 30% for benefits.

What district collaboration is required for success and why?

District-wide tutoring programs require collaboration with and support from a variety of functional areas. Key functional areas to consider and how to collaborate are detailed below:

Regardless of Tutoring Approach (Partner with a Provider or Grow Your Own)

  • Executive Sponsor Support: The tutoring program project manager will need an individual at the district level who can both sponsor the tutoring program and oversee their work. This Executive Sponsor serves as a manager, but also signs off on board reports and ensures that tutoring is approved by the board if necessary.
  • Budget and Funding: Launching a tutoring program requires clear guidance on budgeting and funding procurement processes at the district level. Depending on your funding structure, you may also need an understanding of the grants management systems in the district.
  • School Leader Support Team: Because High-Impact Tutoring is built into the school day, implementing tutoring necessitates working with the district-level team that oversees school leaders. This is the team that typically manages principals; its engagement is needed to support buy-in, school selection, and general investment from principals.
  • Academic, Curriculum, and/or other Departments with Instructional Coaches and Content: High-Impact Tutoring requires an articulated scope and sequence for tutoring sessions. For districts partnering with a provider, the district and provider should collaborate to ensure coordination with classroom work with high-quality tutoring curriculum and materials. For Grow your Own programs, tutor training and resources should be created in conjunction with the Instructional Coaches or Content-Specific Teams across the district. This collaboration ensures that tutoring sessions align with the school curriculum, and it helps integrate tutoring more closely with district-wide curriculum maps.
  • Legal Counsel: If partnering with providers, you will need the support of legal counsel to draw up an airtight contract with each provider, including approval processes and student data-sharing agreements. Even when growing your own program, your district will need to create policies and guidelines that deal with ethical practices related to contract employees, including their role as employees of the district.
  • Research, Accountability, and Data Staff: You will need to work with research and accountability staff both to identify criteria for assigning students to appropriate tutoring programs and also to determine goals and measures of success and growth across all tutoring programs.
  • District Relationship and Outreach Staff: The success of your program depends on how well it is publicized, both to prospective tutors and to prospective students. Working closely with teams who focus on partnership development will support outreach efforts and help build stakeholder investment.
  • Facilities: For in-person tutoring, you must schedule exactly when and where in each school building the tutoring sessions will take place. This might involve using existing classroom space in a school and adapting rooms to ensure that tutoring can take place based on the total number of students served.
  • Technology: Especially for virtual or hybrid programs, you will need to assess your program’s technology needs before you can begin tutoring. This includes assessing both software and hardware needs, including wifi hotspots, laptops, headsets, and webcams for students who do not have their own at home.
  • Caregiver Engagement Team: To ensure buy-in and support for your tutoring program, you must consider how the program will be communicated to students and their caregivers. This will involve collaborating with the team that works directly on caregiver engagement and determining district-wide initiative language. Caregiver engagement is particularly important to maintain enrollment and attendance.

Additional Collaboration Needed for Growing Your Own Program

  • HR including accounting and payroll: Staffing a tutoring program may involve an additional and separate application process for tutors, including required paperwork and compliance with employment policies such as background check screening and data privacy expectations.
  • Counseling Department: In some cases, it may be necessary to involve the counseling department, particularly if students in upper grades are serving as tutors for lower grades. The counseling department might be involved in determinations around awarding high school credit and/or offering stipends. It could also be engaged in bigger-picture student-centered considerations; for example, school counselors might coach students on how to leverage their experiences as tutors when writing their college and scholarship application essays.