Kerr & Bendheim: Keep programs running despite financial and scale challenges by getting creative with funding with an emphasis on evidence-based practices.
By means of Sarah Kerr & Kathy Bendheim
This story first appeared on The 74a nonprofit news site about education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more messages like this in your inbox.
High impact tutoring has the strongest evidence base of any approach to improve student learning, and contributes to greater engagement and presence. As far as proven education solutions go, they are quite good, and have rightly been a bipartisan priority since the pandemic.
But federal pandemic relief money that helped spur the expansion of such programs dried up in September, and recent research has fueled debates about the effectiveness of high-impact tutoring when implemented on a large scale. This includes an evaluation of Metro Nashville Public Schools tutoring program who reported small gains for students and a meta-analysis of large, high-impact tutoring programs that showed challenges in enforcement evidence-based practices.
Yet our experience implementing and evaluating high-impact tutoring programs shows that when states and school districts get creative with funding and focus on implementing key, evidence-based practices, they can achieve the positive student outcomes that research shows.
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This summer our organizations organized a learn to sprint to help 10 geographically and demographically diverse school districts build and sustain these types of programs. It was inspiring to see their commitment to overcoming barriers and finding innovative solutions. Here’s what some school districts are doing this year:
Be creative with financing and using your own resources. Recent estimates suggest this would cost money $15 billion annually to offer intensive guidance to 20% of the students. Groundbreaking technologies, such as AI-assisted tutoringcan ultimately help reduce costs, but securing sustainable funding for high-impact tutoring is a challenge. To fill budget gaps, school districts are investing their own tax dollars and exploring other federal funding streams, including donate money for specific student populations, such as children from low-income families or with special needs; America Corps; and the federal work-study program.
For example, Lincoln Parish Schools in Louisiana combined local money with Title I and IDEA – Individuals With Disabilities Education Act – funding to pilot high-impact tutoring in its schools in 2021. A state grant and federal pandemic relief funds helped continue the program. One will be used for the 2024-2025 school year per-pupil allocation from the stateas well as Title I and IDEA funds.
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The Ector County Independent School District in Texas made significant cuts in its 2024-2025 budget to close a $24 million deficit, but decided to maintain funding for high-impact tutoring based on the positive results. During the 2022-2023 school year half of the students who had scored below grade level on the previous state assessment and had received at least 20 hours of tutoring at grade level or higher after one year. This year, the district is using $2 million in Title I funds to pay for this service in elementary and middle schools, and has available compensatory education funds for its high school programs.
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education in Washington, DC, pays for high-impact tutoring with a Local investment of $5 millionphilanthropic dollars and by partnering with local colleges and universities for teachers who come through the federal work-study program.
A number of states are helping with funding, including by incorporating high-impact tutoring into broader initiatives. Oregon is tapping into its state-funded resources early literacy initiative to require district grantees to use the approach to improve reading skills. Tennessee includes it in its funding formula. Districts have also found ways to incorporate it into existing school programs. For example, Baltimore City Public Schools has included it as one of the interventions for students who need extra support.
Investing in evidence-based programs to maximize funding. States and school districts can increase the impact of their funding by focusing it on evidence-based practices. Our organizations have a template school districts demonstrate how to prioritize evidence in grants and contracts. After participating in our sprint, Florida made a new high-impact tutoring initiative and required providers to comply certain criteria to qualify for state funding. The Louisiana Legislature required that programs funded through a $30 million state investment follow evidence-based practices and collect data on student outcomes broken down by demographics. Another sprint team is exploring a contract approach that focuses on the performance of its tutoring provider – paying for results instead of services.
Make informed implementation decisions. Evidence-based, high-impact guidance in which main featuressuch as one-on-one or small group sessions held at least three times a week during school hours can increase learning at all grade levels. But districts sometimes deviate from these principles because of local needs and resources. For example, many districts struggle to fit high-impact tutoring into the school day and choose to hold sessions outside of regular hours, which can reduce attendance and effectiveness. Implementation choices must remain research-based to ensure strong results.
How districts can continue high-impact education after ESSER funding expires
Focused on continuous improvement. Less than half of the teams that participated in our summer program came in with an understanding of best practices for evaluating programs. Planning data collection from the beginning is essential for assessing and improving program effectiveness. While this can be intimidating, but is an essential part of any new learning approach. For example, based on her findings recent evaluationMetro Nashville Public Schools improved elements of its robust tutoring program, including improving communication with teachers.
Today’s funding and implementation challenges should not become an excuse to discount high-impact tutoring. We encourage students to persevere despite challenges and to learn from feedback. The education community needs to do the same when it comes to high-impact tutoring. It will take time and hard work to make this happen at scale, but with high-impact tutoring, schools can give students the support they need to thrive.