Design of the Playbook

How does this playbook work?

Who is the intended audience for the Playbook?

This Playbook is designed for school district staff interested in implementing High-Impact Tutoring in their districts. While district staff members are the primary audience, state educational officials and school administrators will also be able to leverage many of the resources in the Playbook.

How was the Playbook designed?

This Playbook draws on a large body of tutoring research and interviews with tutoring providers and district leaders who are implementing high-impact tutoring. It aims to help Districts understand and prioritize what is most critical to the design, planning and implementation of High-Impact Tutoring programs through a set of research-informed and practical tools.

Why are the Playbook’s tools and resources in this specific order?

Designing and implementing a new High-Impact Tutoring program can be broken into four specific phases of work that provide the framework for this Playbook as outlined in the figure below:

 

Developing and Implementing High-Impact Tutoring
Lay the Foundation
Lay the Foundation

Identify a focus area, determine your program’s scale, set initial goals, and select an implementation strategy.

Plan for Effective Operations
Plan for Effective Operations

Develop timelines, plan small-scale pilot programs, ensure staff capacity, determine budget and funding sources, and build key stakeholders’ investment in tutoring.

Design for Impact
Design for Impact: Partner with a Provider or Grow Your Own?

Ensure program design aligns with the elements of High-Impact Tutoring and establish regular data collection, reflection, and continuous improvement strategies.

Implement High-Impact Tutoring
Implement High-Impact Tutoring

Identify school sites, select students, schedule tutoring sessions, and communicate regularly with students and caregivers to ensure enrollment and attendance.

 

Which Supplement do you need: Grow Your Own Program or Partner with a Provider?

Section 3: Design for Impact, contains two Supplements: Partner with a Provider and Grow Your Own Program. These two Supplements describe two approaches to building tutoring capacity. When a district partners with a provider, it contracts with an external organization and outsources the majority of the design and implementation of tutoring to that organization. When a district grows its own program, the district’s staff designs and implements High-Impact Tutoring itself, leveraging existing systems in the district and the talent pool in the community.

Learn more about the advantages and prerequisites for each approach and how to choose an approach in Section1: Lay the Foundation, then read the Supplement that applies to the particular approach you chose.

Some school districts may choose to implement both of these strategies simultaneously in different schools or blend the two approaches to create a hybrid model. For these approaches, we suggest reading both Supplements, then picking out the relevant resources from each one.