2022 CEA Grantees

AIR Tutors, in partnership with WestEd, will conduct a randomized controlled trial evaluation of its high dosage math tutoring program. AIR Tutors will examine the impact of its program on English learners and will additionally seek to understand whether learning gains persist beyond one year. AIR Tutors will partner with school districts to enroll historically underserved student groups, including English learners, in grades 4-6.

Amira Learning will combine the mentorship of high school and college-age tutors with the power of Amira’s intelligent instructional and diagnostic platform, which is fueled by artificial intelligence and rooted in the science of reading, to deliver tutoring. Amira will partner with organizations in California’s Central Valley to recruit and train young adults to tutor struggling readers in grades 1-5. Amira will study whether the hybrid mentorship model produces better results than the use of the Amira platform alone, for students generally and also for specific subgroups.

Amplify provides high-impact literacy tutoring to support K-6 students in becoming confident  readers. Amplify will research the tutor and student characteristics (e.g., gender, race, spoken  language) that are most important for tutor-student matching. While students are most often assigned to tutors based on scheduling or availability, evidence suggests stronger tutorstudent matches can result in higher student engagement and increased achievement. Amplify will examine the effectiveness of different variables in tutor-student matching, studying student outcomes in achievement, attendance, and self-reported factors related to learner identity. Amplify serves students who are below grade level and who are predominantly from historically underserved groups. Amplify’s school district partners vary in enrollment size and span rural,  suburban, and urban districts.

The ASSISTments Foundation (TAF) will pilot a tutoring program based on its flagship product, ASSISTments, a free math practice and assessment tool that provides students with immediate  feedback and gives teachers data to effectively implement their curricula. TAF’s model will support paraprofessionals who are serving as tutors by leveraging the ASSISTments tool. TAF will pilot its math tutoring program in Baltimore City Public Schools across a large number of schools to target students in grades 3-8. While tutors will be hired by the school district, TAF will provide the relevant tools and training for the district to implement high-impact tutoring with  paraprofessionals.

Baltimore City Public Schools (“City Schools”) continues to invest in providing K-12 students access to high dosage tutoring during the school day as a critical lever for academic acceleration and personalized learning. As City Schools expands its portfolio of tutoring programs, the district seeks to understand the effectiveness of its established systems and structures for maximizing the efficacy and compatibility of the various models being implemented by internal, vendor, and local community-based providers within the school system. This grant will support the qualitative analysis needed to understand the impact of these efforts, the continuous improvement of tutoring coordination and implementation, and the ability to refine guidance on the systems, structures, and processes needed to maximize the effectiveness of sustainable tutoring in City Schools.

Black Hills Special Services Cooperative (BHSSC), in partnership with Technology andInnovation in Education (TIE), will work with the Red Cloud Indian School to serve learners  seeking additional academic support. Red Cloud Indian School is located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The Pine Ridge Reservation shares the same geography with the OglalaSioux Tribe which is one of nine Native Nations in the State of South Dakota. TIE will oversee program content, processes, implementation, and data collection. TIE will assist in the  development of a responsive math and ELA tutoring  program, serving students in grades K-12 during the school day, and in turn, help develop the evidence base on how rural school districts can launch and scale  high-impact tutoring programs.

Cambiar Education, through its Illuminate Literacy program, will develop, test, and refine a techenabled literacy tool across multiple settings (e.g., school, tutor, home) and partners. Illuminate will evaluate to what extent foundational reading instruction typically delivered by a tutor can be successfully delivered in combination with their tech-enabled literary tools, with the goal of freeing up tutor capacity for other student supports. Initial prototypes will focus on foundational  reading instruction for students in early elementary grades.

The Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University (CEPR), in partnership with the CALDER at the American Institutes for Research and NWEA, will provide a consortium of midand large-sized districts–and the field generally–with an understanding of how well their COVID19 academic recovery strategies like high-impact tutoring are working. This research will help guide recovery efforts and inform how districts and states allocate limited resources when ESSER funding ends. The research team will work with districts who collectively serve over 700,000 enrolled students. Using NWEA MAP interim assessment data, the team will provide districts with information at multiple points during the year so they can make course corrections in their recovery strategies as needed. The team will publish reports of lessons learned from these districts to help guide recovery efforts in the broader field.

The Commit Partnership will support school districts and charter networks in the Dallas region to embed the principles of high-impact tutoring into their overall instructional framework. Commit’s support for districts is critical as some Texas schools are still grappling with how to deliver tutoring to all struggling students, as required under a sweeping new Texas law. As other districts shift their focus from compliance to excellence, Commit will be a crucial partner in helping system leaders embed research-backed principles into their tutoring models. Commit will support districts by convening district leaders together monthly in tutoring focused learning communities that will ultimately support the expansion of high-dosage tutoring. Continuing the work they began last year, Commit will serve as a key partner of Dallas’s regional tutoring effort. They will continue to engage deeply with Dallas area superintendents and other cabinet-level
leaders to build an understanding of high-dosage as a priority and to develop aligned local  policy and action.

Deans for Impact (DFI) will convene educator preparation programs that are mobilizing teacher-candidates to serve as tutors in high need schools, establishing the Aspiring Teachers as Tutors Network and developing a policy framework for strengthening the tutor-to-teacher  pipeline. DFI will also develop and test the effectiveness of tutor training modules to prepare  aspiring teachers to serve as tutors, initially focused on math in grades K-8. Against the backdrop of challenges with tutor supply in the 2021-2022 school year and declining interest in the teaching profession, DFI seeks to increase the number of future teachers serving as tutors– both as a means of sustainably scaling tutoring to more K-12 students and as a strategy for strengthening pathways into teaching.

Great Oaks Foundation (GO Foundation) will recruit, train, and support a corps of young adults who are placed in partner schools where they intensively tutor students as a part of a year of service through AmeriCorps. These tutors are called Fellows to encompass the multiple roles they play to tutor as well as mentor the students with whom they are matched. The GO Foundation will support schools in providing math and ELA tutoring to students in grades 3-12. Drawing on over a decade of experience, the GO Foundation works with school partners to develop a coherent strategy for the deployment of tutors, including additional training for tutors, support with scheduling, establishing treatment groups, and contingency planning. GO has  formulated 10 essential tutoring program elements that are based on its own implementation  experience as well as academic research. The GO Foundation’s model offers a unique opportunity to address some of the logistical challenges that perplexed educators last year. GO intentionally recruits a diverse group of tutors who reflect the children it serves and invests in its Fellows’ professional development.

Green Dot Public Schools will expand its current tutoring program, which provides small-group math instruction to 6th and 9th graders, to serve 16 schools in SY 2022-23. Green Dot’s tutoring model is unique as it replaces (rather than supplements) students’ remedial math course; tutors
deliver curricular material directly to small groups of students who are on the “cusp” of proficiency. Green Dot is partnering with Saga Education to provide each tutor with individualized feedback and coaching through videotaped lessons. Green Dot will also work with Saga Education to co-design professional development to ensure all tutors have a foundation in instruction, classroom management, curriculum interpretation, and lesson cycle design. In the coming year, Green Dot hopes to learn more about how its model can be implemented in different contexts and what challenges may arise.

Guilford County Schools is building on its previous years of success launching high-impact tutoring programs across the county. Guilford is partnering with local HBCUs and other  institutions of higher education, as well as community members and even current high school students, to bring in-person tutoring to the district to support ELA, math, and science across all  grades. Guilford targets the students most in need of tutoring support based on prior performance. Over the course of the school year, Guilford hopes to better understand how additional tutor support focused on building student relationships can lead to better student  outcomes. Learning from the challenges and successes of its program, Guilford can help the field better understand how districts can scale and sustain a multi-year tutoring strategy.

Ignite! Reading will conduct a final pilot of their virtual tutoring program, designed to strengthen foundational literacy skills beginning with first grade students. Ignite! Reading’s model is innovative, yet simple: the organization works with school districts to embed 15 minutes of daily tutoring into the school day, with a user-friendly virtual platform to provide each student 1:1  tutoring in foundational reading skills with a trained reading tutor. The tutoring program is  partnering with more than 20 schools across six states, serving over a thousand students in
the 2022-2023   school year. Ignite! Reading works with a diverse set of schools, including traditional and charter, urban and rural, and schools from large and small districts.

JUMP Math will provide digitized tutoring resources and training for teachers and tutors to deliver their tutoring program to students in grades K-8 in three different settings: after-school,  during-school, at-home. JUMP Math will partner with both rural and urban schools serving  historically underserved students in California, Louisiana, and New York. JUMP Math will work to explore which supports work best for families and to better understand the challenges and  supports needed for districts to successfully  implement its tutoring model.

New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) will  recruit a cadre of tutors, including high school seniors and college students, to  deliver high-impact tutoring across the New Orleans area. Working with the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans (ERA-NOLA), NSNO will learn more about
the effectiveness of the student-to-student tutoring model and whether early exposure to  working with students influences tutors’ decisions to pursue teaching as a career. NSNO will  partner with local universities, including Tulane University, Dillard University, and the University of New Orleans, to recruit tutors who will serve students in some of New Orleans’ largest charter management organizations. NSNO’s tutoring program will focus on students in grades 3-4 and 6-7 who scored below proficient on the 2022 state assessment. This project will deliver valuable findings about the efficacy of recruiting high school and college students as tutors, and also has the potential to cultivate more prospective teachers in the New Orleans’ teacher pipeline.

Once is an early-reading program for Pre-K, K and 1st grade that delivers daily, one-on-one, in-person instruction. Once is partnering with school districts and charter organizations in multiple states–California, Hawaii, New York, Ohio, and Washington, DC–to deliver in-person early literacy tutoring. Once is building a template for districts to scale and refine tutoring programs even after pandemic-related federal funds have been exhausted by relying on existing school staff like paraprofessionals to deliver in-person tutoring. Once will work with the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and LXD Research to examine the use of direct instruction in tutoring, the use of existing school staff as tutors, and the role of video-based coaching for tutors.

OnYourMark Education, in partnership with the National Student Support Accelerator,  will conduct randomized controlled trial studies to understand how different tutor to-student ratios impact student learning, as well as the mechanisms through which tutor-student ratio affects student outcomes.  OnYourMark is a virtual tutoring program designed to equip students in  grades K-2 with foundational literacy skills. OnYourMark will serve hundreds of students across  multiple schools in a large charter network in the Dallas region. OnYourMark will also work to improve cost effectiveness toward a sustainable model, decreasing per-student cost year over year.

Pearl’s tutor intelligence platform provides technical scaffolding to manage tutor operations at any scale while consistently collecting data across both in-person and online instruction. Within this platform, Pearl can also build tools to integrate data across tutoring platforms and  traditional data sources like School Information Systems (SIS). Pearl aims to increase the speed  at which all partners can roll out high-impact tutoring while removing the burden of data collection from disparate sources. By streamlining data collection and management, Pearl  empowers its partners to identify gaps and improve program design in real time. Pearl will serve students in more than 100 schools, partnering with districts participating in the ESSER-funded   Illinois Tutoring Initiative and with schools using the OnYourMark tutoring program.

ProvenTutoring, an initiative housed at the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University, will conduct research to understand how schools can improve the adoption, implementation, and scaling of tutoring models. ProvenTutoring plans to test how to  best support school leaders in selecting, planning for, and providing ongoing support for highly   effective tutoring models during the school day. Additionally, ProvenTutoring will build understanding around educator decision making when adopting a tutoring model and will identify barriers to scale as experienced by providers. The team is collaborating with districts nationally to support the implementation of high-impact tutoring. Through a partnership with the Colorado Department of Education, ProvenTutoring will provide technical assistance to district grantees of its High Impact Tutoring Program. ProvenTutoring’s research design is
unique, given their experience bridging the gap between research and practice by matchmaking districts with research-evaluated tutoring models.

Reading Partners will contract with a third-party evaluation team to conduct a randomized  controlled trial to examine the impact of Reading Partners Connects, or RPCx, the online version of their widely researched in-person tutoring program. Reading Partners will expand literacy  tutoring to thousands of students through both in-person and RPCx tutoring. Outside of this initiative, Reading Partners currently works with 180 schools in 12 regions across the country to  deliver in-person, school-based tutoring.

Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) will develop state-level policies and systems to support the scaling and sustainability of high-impact tutoring. To help source qualified tutors, RIDE will expand its menu of vetted tutoring providers and pilot a new “trainee-as-tutor” model that connects trainee teachers in teacher prep programs with  schools in need of tutors. The state will also test the use of a regional  tutoring coordinator–a new full-time position–to help districts with the staffing capacity they need to launch new tutoring programs. The AnnenbergInstitute at Brown University will study the lessons learned from RIDE’s work and other states to create a policy report on how to develop a replicable, state-level model for scaling and sustaining high impact tutoring.

San Francisco Education Fund (SFEF) will provide virtual literacy tutoring to thousands of students citywide through the BookNook platform. The program will focus primarily on serving students in grades 2-5 who are not yet on grade level in reading. SFEF will conduct an ANCOV
study to examine the impact of the BookNook tutoring.

Southern Education Foundation (SEF) will support up to eight school districts in developing and fielding outcomes based bid documents and contracts, making a substantial portion of payment to tutoring vendors conditional on evidence of student growth. SEF’s model for outcomes-based contracts (OBC) will provide critical guidance for the field that may be especially useful when school systems reach the end of their COVID-19 stimulus funding. SEF will build on its first year of OBC work, having  supported four school districts in launching OBC for math tutoring  programs in the 2021-2022 school year. In the coming year, SEF will partner with districts to create model OBC bid documents and contracts and will assist the districts in  tracking student progress toward the project’s goals. The goals of this project include improved  student achievement, a strong vendor response, ensuring that contracts are viable between
partners, and establishing a competitive landscape for improving student outcomes.

State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) will support district partners in embedding high-impact tutoring as a core component of their academic strategy and will also conduct research to understand which tutoring models have potential to be financially sustainable. SCORE’s learnings from supporting district strategy–and related research on financial sustainability–are valuable to the field as districts and states grapple with the question of how to make tutoring an enduring feature of American education. SCORE will establish a network of several districts to focus on a set of enabling conditions that could be key for sustainable high-dosage tutoring.  The network will  prioritize support for  districts who have  already completed  year of  implementation and are now ready to embed tutoring into their overall academic strategy, develop a financially sustainable model, and incorporate tutoring within their overall teacher pipeline strategy. SCORE will focus on early literacy for grades 1-3 and will impact through its network hundreds of thousands of students.

Teach For America (TFA) will conduct an evaluation of its Ignite Fellowship to understand how the tutoring program impacts student outcomes and whether participation in the program influences tutors to become teachers. TFA’s Ignite Fellowship is a national tutoring corps, composed primarily of current college students, and is designed with a dual focus on academic
acceleration and student well-being. It aims to recruit and hire exceptional fellows, strategically align with school partners, and support ongoing training of fellows working with students.Fellows provide virtual tutoring, during the school day, with a focus on early elementary reading
and middle school math.

Zearn is the online math tutoring program fueling the Tennessee Department of Education’s high-impact, high-dosage tutoring program called Accelerating Learning and Literacy (ALL) Corps, a nationally recognized tutoring model endorsed by the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. More than half – over 85,000 – of Tennesse elementary and middle school students engaged in the TN ALL Corps have accelerated their math learning. The Accelerate grant specifically supports Zearn’s partnership with ASU’s Center on ReinventingPublic Education (CRPE) to describe the implementation of tutoring at the state and district level and evaluate preliminary data linking program design and proximal outcomes. Zearn’s research ultimately aims to support districts and states in designing and implementing their own tutoring programs.