Study shows multi-million-dollar high impact tutoring program is helping DC students

 
Cynthia Pollard, Amanda Lu, Amirpasha Zandieh, Carly D. Robinson, Susanna Loeb, Nancy Waymack

The District of Columbia (DC) Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) launched a three-year, $33 million investment in scaling and supporting high-impact tutoring (HIT) across DC, with a particular focus on students classified as “at-risk” or having experienced disrupted instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. This investment is a core part of the city’s strategy to address interrupted schooling, given the strong body of evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of HIT as an intervention that can produce dramatic gains in student learning. Through this investment, OSSE strives to accelerate learning for students who were impacted by disrupted learning as well as to address persistent achievement gaps present before the pandemic.

During the 2022-23 school year, OSSE expanded the HIT Initiative (the Initiative) with the goal of rapidly expanding access to high-impact math and English Language Arts (ELA) tutoring for students in grades kindergarten through 12, with a focus on DC schools with the greatest concentrations of students identified as at risk. Grant funding awarded directly to tutoring providers serves as the primary mechanism for expansion of high-impact tutoring. Tutoring providers with grants partner with eligible schools in DC schools and at community-based locations to conduct tutoring programs. Eligible schools are those in which 40 percent or more of their students are categorized as at risk. In this report “DC schools” or “OSSE schools” refers to schools within the 70 local education agencies (LEAs) located within the geographic bounds of Washington, DC. DC Public Schools (DCPS) students make up approximately 52 percent of the total student population and 46 percent of schools; public charter schools make up the remainder of DC students and schools. OSSE provides support and oversight for all DC schools as the state education agency.

During the 2022-23 school year, the Initiative awarded grants directly to 14 organizations and funded an additional 13 tutoring providers through the recipient of a strategic program supports grant to CityTutor DC, an organization which incubates HIT providers and supports community-based tutoring hubs as part of their partnership with OSSE. CityTutor DC also provided tutoring design sprints and communities of practice with OSSE funding to support tutoring providers and school leaders in implementing high-impact tutoring programs. The Initiative also funded 10 school-based HIT managers at DCPS middle and high schools to coordinate and support high impact tutoring in their schools. 

This report focuses on implementation and effects of the grant program from July 2022 – June 2023.  Using available data collected by tutoring providers and administrative data shared by OSSE, we describe program reach, impact on student outcomes including attendance and achievement indicators, and facilitators and barriers to implementation.