Loeb & Safran: From Title I and Americorps to apprenticeships and renegotiated contracts with vendors, ways to find replacement funds and economize.
strong>Multi-Tiered Systems of Support: Districts across the nation use Multi-Tiered Systems of Support to target appropriate interventions for students with learning, social, emotional, or behavioral difficulties. Many districts could improve these offerings by using a high-impact tutoring approach, making sure their interventions build relationships between students and educators that motivate, engage and target students’ growth areas using data and high-quality instructional materials. Schools can integrate high-impact tutoring with the funds already being used for MTSS by reallocating resources to more effective approaches.
Statewide Tutoring Efforts
Mays pointed to the move to focus federal pandemic relief money on tutoring programs whose design showed evidence of effectiveness, such as individual or very small groups, and using an aligned curriculum in sessions at least three times a week. This model differed from tutoring provided under the No Child Left Behind Act’s supplemental education services, which were repeatedly found to have no benefit for student achievement—in part because programs varied significantly from district to district.
The New Jersey Department of Education recently released a resource to provide information on the benefits and essential design elements of effective, high-impact tutoring programs to support local education agencies’ efforts to meet the increased needs of students, according to an advisory.
The resource – “High-Impact Tutoring: An Evidence-Based Strategy to Accelerate Learning” – was developed in response to the strong interest in designing and implementing tutoring programs through both federal and discretionary funding streams. It aims to assist school districts in designing and planning high-impact tutoring programs.
I spent the past year visiting Jackson and eight other schools across three states and the District of Columbia to understand how and why their successful tutoring programs work and the challenges they’ve had to navigate. Our FutureEd study also included dozens of conversations with educators, school district leaders, providers, researchers and others who have turned to tutoring to combat learning loss after COVID.
When Muriel Bowser, the mayor of the District of Columbia, announced in early March that her administration had carved out $4.8 million for “high impact tutoring” in its 2024-25 budget, she was met with thunderous applause.
Bowser had made the announcement to a room packed with administrators, tutoring service providers and policy analysts. But the excitement was tempered somewhat by questions about how far these funds would go: Is this appropriation enough? What about tutoring in the next year?
As the federal stimulus package—ESSER—winds down, states are racing against the clock to find other sustainable funding sources to keep tutoring alive in their schools. So far, states have taken a patchwork approach. Some states are creating policies that would embed tutoring as a service; other states have relied on one-time grants.
Those efforts have helped pay dividends for attendance, too. In the second study, released earlier this month, researchers with Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator found that students are 7 percent less likely to be absent on days they have scheduled tutoring sessions. The study, conducted over the 2022-23 school year, examined absenteeism rates of 4,478 students in 141 schools in the District of Columbia.
“There are lots of reasons why students are absent. Being disengaged in school is one reason,” said Nancy Waymack, the director of partnerships and policy at the NSSA."Tutoring is one way that students can have one more meaningful relationship in school. Tutoring can be one tool to move the needle in the right direction.”
Meanwhile, preliminary research released earlier this month found that high-impact tutoring could increase attendance. A study by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University discovered that Washington, D.C., students receiving high-impact tutoring were less likely to be absent on days they had sessions.
“These results highlight the multifaceted benefits of high-impact tutoring and its potential to address the widespread problem of chronic absenteeism in our schools,” said Susanna Loeb, founder and executive director of the Stanford center, in a statement.
The mayor’s announcement about the funding for high-impact tutoring — a specific kind of academic help that consists of frequent, small-group sessions — came at a citywide summit on the topic. She touted the effort’s success, including a recent Stanford University study that found that students in D.C. were more likely to attend school when they had sessions. “Last school year, we found that students enrolled in high-impact tutoring were likely to reach their math and literacy goals,” Bowser said.
Preliminary findings from research conducted by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University provide evidence that high-impact tutoring has positive attendance benefits for DC students. The District is also seeing early signs of academic impact as well, with at-risk students who receive the appropriate amount of high-impact tutoring nearly 7% more likely to achieve their growth goals than at-risk students receiving less tutoring, according to interim assessment data.
Today, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) shared early findings from a study that shows high-impact tutoring (HIT) has positive attendance benefits for DC students. The preliminary findings from research conducted by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University provide evidence that DC students participating in HIT were more likely to attend school on days they had a tutoring session scheduled. While the comprehensive results of this study will be published later, these initial findings highlight the potential of HIT to support stronger school attendance.
“HIT is a research-based intervention that has long been available for higher-income families. Our investment is helping level the playing field of access, and we are seeing it pay off. HIT is helping to reinforce the importance and power of consistent, positive relationships with students and the adults who support them at school,” said State Superintendent of Education Dr. Christina Grant. “These early findings show us what we would expect from this evidence-based intervention – one-on-one and small group, personalized high-impact tutoring sessions that are grounded in strong relationships have benefits that extend beyond improved math and literacy scores.”
In 2023, researchers from the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University tracked the reading progress of about 2,000 students in kindergarten to second grade in a dozen Texas charter schools.
Half the students in the study were randomly assigned to attend class normally, while half received intensive remote tutoring for part of the school day, in small groups.
Researchers found that tutored students scored significantly better on Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills testing.
The following list serves as a compilation of potential resources. CDE strongly recommends that school districts conduct thorough vetting to ensure alignment with local guidelines for instructional materials. By school districts ensuring customized interventions for their distinct needs and standards, they can establish a resilient foundation for academic success in mathematics.
High-impact tutoring offers personalized attention, targeting individual learning gaps.
Stanford’s National Student Support Accelerator suggests various tutor trainings along with online pre-service trainings such as Saga Coach. The training level of tutors also impacts tutor payment with some models proposing payments of $20 per hour for non-professionals and payments of up to $50 per hour for teachers and professional tutors.
This brief provides an overview of available funding for high-impact tutoring programs beyond Covid-19 relief funding (ESSER).
Many streams of funding, on their own or braided together, can pay for high-impact tutoring in U.S. schools.
As schools, districts, and states work to address the student needs following the pandemic, many turned to high-impact tutoring, a research-based approach to providing individualized instruction to students. In fact, thirty-seven percent of public schools reported providing “high-dosage” tutoring on a federal school pulse panel survey in December 2022. In addition, many states have implemented or are exploring policies to increase access to high-impact tutoring. This brief explores the tutoring policy landscape at the state level as of November 2023.
“So, high impact tutoring is tutoring that happens with a qualified tutor and that means someone who is trained and is receiving coaching. It also happens frequently. So at least three to 5 times a week, in a small group or one-on-one. It is very personalized,” says Director of Partnerships and Policy for the National Student Support Accelerator Nancy Waymack.
In the aftermath of COVID-19, learning losses are among the most devastating, persistent consequences of the pandemic. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds were disproportionately impacted, creating both a learning and inequality crisis. Studies from the California School Boards Association and University of Chicago hail high-impact tutoring as a key solution for both issues.
In Guilford County Schools, implementation of high-impact tutoring has produced impressive results. All student groups improved their test proficiency scores this year.
Provides $26.1 million in GEER funds to support the implementation of high-dosage tutoring programs in Ohio districts and schools. The tutoring programs will be offered by providers on the High-Quality Tutoring Provider (HQTP) Vendor Directory and funded through the Department. Tutoring programs will be offered at no direct cost to participating districts or schools. However, all participating districts and schools must commit to participation criteria that align to best practices for high-quality tutoring.
Updates this 2021 law to allow school districts to advance students who score in the “approaching” category on their third grade Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) ELA test and score in the 50th percentile on the third-grade reading screener test if they complete summer school or tutoring in fourth grade. Students who score in the “below basic” category must complete both summer school and tutoring in 4th grade in order to advance.