National Accelerator Pushes for Tutoring for All in K–12
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 12/01/20
The
original form of personalized learning — tutoring — is about to take a
giant step forward. Pandemic-era learning loss has motivated a group
of national education leaders to develop an initiative to make
"high-impact tutoring" available to all K-12 students, no
matter whether their families can afford tutoring or not. When the
National
Student Support Accelerator,
launched by the Annenberg
Institute at Brown University,
is fully running, it will consist of several components:
-
A
network of tutoring organizations and educational systems that want
to implement high-impact tutoring and agree on some way to certify
tutoring programs based on the practices they follow.
-
Tools
and research for use by organizations that are launching new
tutoring programs or revising the ones they already have. That would
include a "toolkit" for universities that want to create
tutoring programs staffed by their own students and a financial
model for calculating tutoring costs in given scenarios.
-
A
research agenda with at least six "tutoring test sites"
where various tutoring models could be measured for their efficacy.
-
Models
for scaling successful programs, including coming up ways to
generate sustainable funding.
Among
the ideas under consideration is one in which tutoring providers
would recruit and train unemployed people as tutors
The
team working on this effort expected to be done with conceptual
development in December, with the expectation that
boots-on-the-ground work will begin in January.
High-impact
tutoring involves teaching students one-on-one or in small groups
towards a specific goal, the accelerator explained.
The idea is to supplement classroom experiences — not replace them — to
help students make "substantial learning gains."
The
working group includes representatives from a number of education
nonprofits and companies, foundations and universities. Staffing
includes people from Brown,
as well as Texas
A&M University
and Georgetown
University.
Funding to date has been provided by the Walton
Family Foundation,
the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation
and Zoom.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.