In the past five years, the Texas district’s investments in staffing and high dosage tutoring are paying off.
Five years ago, Texas’ Ector County Independent School District was significantly underperforming, said Scott Muri, the district’s superintendent emeritus. Today, it’s a different story.
When Muri joined as the district’s superintendent in 2019, he said, students were “struggling academically in school,” and “all the metrics were heading in the wrong direction.” That same year, the Texas Education Agency gave Ector County ISD an F accountability rating.
But now, Ector County ISD, with about 34,000 students, is on the upswing. Signs point to significantly improved student achievement, and the district earned its first-ever B rating from TEA in 2022, the most recent year rated.
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That’s why the district piloted a virtual tutoring program in the 2020-21 school year. Middle school students were the first to participate. In spring 2021, the live virtual tutoring program expanded to serve 6,000 students in K-12, he said.
That same spring, Ector County ISD designated $10 million of its $93 million in federal pandemic relief funds to tutoring over the next three years, according to a report by university-based research nonprofits FutureEd and the National Student Support Accelerator.
To ensure the tutoring helps students grow academically, the district implemented outcomes-based contracts, where the tutoring company is compensated based on student improvement. Ultimately, Muri said, the more students grow, the more money the tutoring company makes.
“But obviously, if kids are not growing, there’s no money involved. It’s holding people accountable for academic results,” Muri said.
The virtual tutoring program has spurred significant gains in student achievement, FutureEd and the National Student Support Accelerator found.
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