A second or ‘Western’ wave of tutoring
“Lots of other states have helped push tutoring along more than California has. I’m really optimistic that in some ways, it (California) can be a leader, because we’ve learned so much that they could really do it more effectively immediately than we could right at the beginning,” said Susanna Loeb, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education as well as the founder and executive director of the National Student Support Accelerator.
Loeb sees an opportunity for California to jump-start the state’s laggard performance on state and national achievement assessments, especially in early literacy, by creating a second or “Western” wave of tutoring.
In four years, the National Student Support Accelerator has become the foremost source of information on and coordinator of research into online and in-person “intensive, relationship-based, individualized instruction” called by various names, high-dosage, high-impact, or high-intensity tutoring.
This week, three state agencies — the California Department of Education, the State Board of Education, and the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence — will make the first joint effort in promoting it. They will join the nonprofit Results for America and Loeb’s organization in sponsoring a webinar explaining high-impact tutoring.
The Monday event serves as an invitation for up to 40 school districts to design their own high-impact tutoring programs that could serve as a model for other district cohorts.
It isn’t clear what happens after the event, but tutoring providers are hoping the state will get more involved.
“This is the first time that the state has recognized high-impact tutoring as desirable. We know what the research has found, we know the formula for making tutoring work,” said Chris Norwood, founder of the Bay Area Tutoring Association, which works with school districts on creating effective programs. “Now we have to get the word out through channels of information that districts use, like county offices of education.”
