Making an Impact with ARP Dollars

ProvenTutoring coalition partner Saga Education is featured in this article on how tutoring can be one of the most effective tools in getting students back on track.

Alan Safran, chief executive and co-founder of Saga Education, explains that "high-impact tutoring has to be built into the school day, not as an after school after thought."

Could Tutoring Be the Best Tool for Fighting Learning Loss?

"Schools have a decision to make as they advance learning recovery--do they address unfinished learning with proven solutions or design their own?"

Dr. Amanda Neitzel from Johns Hopkins University and ProvenTutoring discusses how schools should approach learning recovery.

High-Quality Classwork + Tutoring: Proven Recipe for Closing the Learning Gap

Implementing High-Dosage Tutoring

Schools are grappling with the best way to spend over $220 billion dollars of Covid relief funds. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s tracking of federal relief dollars, states and districts still have billions that need to be spent. The pressure to spend the funds on impactful programs and interventions is mounting as the largest tranche, $120 billion dollars provided by the American Rescue Plan, approaches its obligation date of September, 2024. Georgetown University’s FutureEd reports schools are planning investments in a range of strategies, and one of them is tutoring.

We know through decades of research that tutoring is among the most effective educational interventions, but dosage and quality determine just how effective. Well-structured tutoring models that make big gains in student achievement are delivered consistently 3-5 times per week. This frequency ensures a systematic delivery of intervention in which students have the opportunity to connect one session to the next and build on the learning they have mastered. Providing students with a daily, or almost-daily, targeted intervention requires commitment, careful planning, and problem solving. Educators have to navigate a dynamic school day--often shaped by absences, staff vacancies, scheduling adjustments, and limited availability of physical space--in order to serve students frequent small group and one-to-one support. Ensuring that students receive the program’s intended dosage is a crucial piece of implementation. Schools can invest in high-quality programs, but if the actual dosage is less than what the program requires to be successful, the programs will not have the desired impact.

These two stories show what is possible when schools invest American Rescue Plan dollars in a well-structured, high-dosage tutoring model and commit to faithful implementation. School leaders and their tutoring partners are uncompromising in the delivery of the program. The result? Measurable gains in achievement.

Trained Teaching Assistants are the Heart of this High-Dosage Model

Situated 20 minutes east of Austin, Elgin is a quickly growing rural community that is partnering with Literacy First to implement high-dosage reading intervention district-wide in all three of their elementary schools utilizing ARP funds.

Currently in their second year of implementing Literacy First’s District Capacity Building Model, Elgin Elementary is an innovative example of the impressive student gains that are possible when federal funding, community resources and literacy expertise are leveraged to implement high dosage reading intervention models with fidelity. In Elgin, gentrification and the interruption of in-person instruction have resulted in students with an even greater need for early reading intervention.

Through intense training and ongoing coaching, Literacy First’s District Capacity Building Model draws on and bolsters the expertise of Teaching Assistants from the school community to provide one-to-one reading intervention 30 minutes a day to young readers in grades K-2 in both English and Spanish. At Elgin Elementary the successful implementation of this model began with district and campus administration that bought in fully to implementing the model with fidelity. This meant reframing Literacy First tutors, who were formerly TAs, as interventionists providing an essential academic service and not “extra hands” to be used for classroom support. The principals at Elgin Elementary found creative ways to protect the one-on-one, daily intervention sessions provided by Literacy First tutors despite the frequent need for classroom coverage due to COVID absences.

But the most crucial factor in the success of the District Capacity Building Model has been the expertise and cultural competency that local tutors provide. Because the vast majority of the Literacy First tutors are community members with experience in the school, they bring an impressive level of commitment, cultural awareness, behavior management and native language skills to their work. In fact, Literacy First is finding that local tutors are surpassing their already impressive results in measures of students on or near grade level while also drastically reducing the number of students discontinued due to behavior. Additionally, this model is proving to be a workforce development initiative. A good portion of Literacy First tutors are finding a path to a career in education as teachers, librarians and parent support specialists in their local schools.

Full Service Tutoring Partnership Ensures Targeted Daily Intervention

Matthew A. Henson Elementary in West Baltimore is a new Success for All partner for the 2022-2023 school, thanks to American Rescue Plan dollars. The school and SFA are collaborating to provide students with Tutoring with the Lightning Squad and ThemeReads, two daily, small group literacy interventions that collectively serve K-8 students.

Drawing upon its years of expertise as a school partner, SFA has found that clear communication at every level is key to ensuring students receive a high-quality, high-dosage intervention. An SFA Tutoring Program Manager connects with each school leader to set the vision and lay the groundwork for the tutoring program. This is followed by a meeting between the tutor coordinator and the school to review the expectations, absenteeism, needs, classroom space, and technology. To ensure an alignment with the school’s culture and staff, SFA matches tutors with schools that have a similar mindset. The SFA tutor at Matthew Henson has truly immersed herself into the school culture by participating in the Back to School Picnic and other school events, building connections with the school staff prior to the start of school, and actively engaging in the staff planning meetings. The collaboration between SFA and the school are sustained through weekly 1:1 check-ins and team meetings dedicated to analyzing student progress, identifying barriers to program delivery, and developing action plans to address challenges.

The SFA tutoring team maintains a strong focus on student data. The tutor, tutor coordinator, and school leads use information from formative assessments to deliver daily tutoring sessions that target individual needs. Within a month of consistent tutoring at Matthew Hensen, the average student who has attended tutoring five times a week has demonstrated three months of growth.

More High-Dosage Programs

Explore other proven, high-dosage models in reading and mathematics on our website, proventutoring.org, or connect with us directly at info@proventutoring.org.

ProvenTutoring | Info@proventutoring.org