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05/06/2021. Article
The National Student Success Accelerator’s mission is to expand high-impact tutoring opportunities for all K-12 students in need. The NSSA is a research-based field-building organization that seeks to drive scaling and continual improvement in the quality of tutoring.
The NSSA began with a group of educators convening around the issue of COVID-19 learning loss and the potential of tutoring as a solution. We are currently seeking to hire our founding Executive Director to further lead the organization through its initial organizational development and launching its initial set of programs and services.
05/05/2021. Article
Saga Education, the national nonprofit behind one of the most studied personalized tutoring programs in the country, today announced the launch of Saga Coach, a free, self-paced online training portal that covers the essential components of effective tutoring. The training is based on Saga's experience as a proven implementer of high-dosage, high-impact tutoring programs serving thousands of students in major U.S. school districts like Chicago, New York City, Washington, D.C. and Broward County, Fla.
04/30/2021. Tool
Cohesion
Tutoring Program Model Dimensions Planning Tool
Developing a Value Proposition
Logic Model Guidance and Template
Webinar: Safety, Expectations, Accessibility, and Evaluation
04/30/2021. Tool
Safety
Data Use: Student Data Privacy Guidance
Tutors: Pre-Service Background Check Guidances
Tutors: Setting Expectations with Tutors
Instruction: Choosing and Using Virtual
04/30/2021. Tool
Equity
Webinar: Cultural Awareness
Conducting a Community Landscape Analysis
Tutor Job Description Guidance
Tutor Recruitment Strategy
Tutor Selection Strategy
04/30/2021. Tool
Learning Integration
Tutor-Family Communication: Crafting an Introductory Statement for Families
Parent Permission Slip for In-School Tutoring: English and Spanish
04/27/2021. Article
“There is a lot of evidence that tutoring can produce large learning gains for a wide range of students, especially students who have fallen behind,” says Carly Robinson, a postdoctoral research associate at the institute. “Tutoring raised to the top of the list of what could put a dent in unprecedented learning loss. Tutoring works.”
The institute quickly developed the National Student Support Accelerator, still in its startup phase, to bring together researchers, schools and donors to help give K-12 students nationwide access to tutoring. Robinson says the goal is to make tutoring effective and then implement that effectiveness at scale.
04/23/2021. Article
Done well, high-impact tutoring can help individual students accelerate their learning and increase their engagement with school, said Susanna Loeb, director of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and a panelist. But designed poorly, tutoring can be ineffective, she said.
As momentum grows to build high-quality tutoring opportunities into the school day, and as more federal stimulus funding for student learning becomes available, districts should consider tutoring initiatives, Loeb said. “This may be the best opportunity we'll have to get this proven intervention built into schools for the long run, to provide all students in need with the high-impact tutoring to supplement their classroom work,” she said.
04/22/2021. Article
High-Impact tutoring — i.e., tutoring delivered three or more times a week by consistent, trained tutors using quality materials and data to inform instruction — is one of the most effective academic interventions, providing an average of more than four months of additional learning in elementary literacy and almost 10 months in high school math, according to research from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University (learn more here). The National Student Support Accelerator offers open-source Accelerator tools and resources to help ensure more equitable access to quality tutoring. These research-backed tools and supports are easy to use and downloadable, and are designed to make structuring, implementing and scaling high-quality, high-impact tutoring programs as straightforward as possible.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Paired Reading is a peer tutoring programme in secondary schools which trains teachers to support and encourage the regular tutoring of Year 7 pupils (aged 11-12 years) by Year 9 pupils (aged 13-14 years). The Paired Reading programme aims to improve pupils' general literacy in addition to speaking and listening skills. This is achieved by pupils working together to follow the Paired Reading steps to choose the material to read, and discuss this, together with the older pupil (tutor) supporting the reading, correcting errors and praising the younger pupil (tutee) throughout. The 16-week programme is intended to take place during normal school hours in timetabled sessions, for 20 minutes each week. Teachers in participating schools received training from the delivery team, a detailed programme manual and extensive digital resources. The impact of Paired Reading on 2,736 pupils in 120 classes in ten participating schools (1,370 in Year 7 and 1,366 in Year 9) was tested using a cluster randomised controlled trial design with 58 classes randomly allocated to receive the programme and 62 classes allocated to the control condition. Schools from the North Tyneside local authority (LA) and in neighbouring LAs of South Tyneside and Sunderland took part in the trial over the 2013/14 academic year. Key conclusions include: (1) This evaluation does not provide any evidence that the Paired Reading programme had an impact on overall reading ability, sentence completion and passage comprehension of participating pupils; (2) There was no evidence of the Paired Reading programme having an effect on overall reading ability, sentence completion and passage comprehension of FSM pupils; and (3) There was some variation in the intervention group schools in terms of the programme setup and delivery. There was also a varying level of support provided to pupils within the intervention by the teachers involved, based mainly on the reading ability of the pupils. However, these appear to be natural variations between the settings of the schools involved and are unlikely to have affected the dosage of the intervention for the pupils involved.
04/13/2021. Research Study
The TextNow Transition Programme aimed to improve the reading comprehension skills of pupils at the transition from primary to secondary school by encouraging engagement in, and enjoyment of, reading. The programme was delivered by Unitas, a national charity that helps young people access, participate, and progress in mainstream education and training. Participating students received 20-minute one to one sessions with a volunteer coach each weekday for five weeks at the end of primary school and for a further 10 weeks at the start of secondary school. Children were expected to read independently for a further 20 minutes per day, and were rewarded for attendance with credits that could be used to buy books online. The trial examined the impact of the programme on 501 pupils in 96 schools across England who had been identified as unlikely to achieve Level 4a or above by the end of Key Stage 2. Pupils who were not likely to gain at least Level 2 were not included in the trial. The study was funded by the Education Endowment Foundation as one of 24 projects in a themed round on literacy catch-up at the primary-secondary transition. Projects funded within this round aimed to identify effective ways to support pupils not achieving Level 4 in English at the end of Key Stage 2. The project was one of four funded with a particular focus on reading for pleasure.
04/13/2021. Research Study
REACH is a targeted reading support programme designed to improve reading accuracy and comprehension in pupils with reading difficulties in Years 7 and 8. It is based on research by the Centre for Reading and Language at York and is delivered by specially trained teaching assistants (TAs). This evaluation tested two REACH interventions, one based directly on the original 'Reading Intervention' developed by York, and one adapted from it with supplementary material on language comprehension. In both versions, pupils received three one to one 35 minute sessions each week for 20 weeks. Pupils were taken out of other lessons (typically not English lessons) for the sessions and so this evaluation assesses the effect of the interventions combined with more time focused on literacy, compared with standard provision. The impact of the interventions on the reading skills of 287 pupils in 27 schools was tested using a randomised controlled trial. Schools in areas close to Leeds were recruited to the trial in 2013. Pupils identified as having relatively poor reading skills were randomly allocated to the original REACH reading intervention, the language comprehension version, or standard provision. In response to slow initial recruitment, the trial was implemented in two phases. A process evaluation was carried out involving a survey of teaching assistants and interviews with staff from participating schools. Key conclusions include: (1) Both REACH interventions had a positive effect on the reading skills of the pupils in the trial. These effects are unlikely to have occurred by chance; (2) Pupils receiving the reading intervention with language comprehension experienced the equivalent of about six months of additional progress on average. For pupils receiving the standard reading intervention the figure was about four months; (3) The evaluation did not provide any evidence that the interventions improved reading comprehension in particular, as opposed to other skills such as word recognition; (4) Staff reported that the interventions improved literacy, reading ability, and confidence. Staff views were more positive in schools where the interventions were delivered by experienced teaching assistants, supported by senior staff, and allocated a dedicated space for delivery; (5) TAs sometimes found the interventions challenging to deliver. In particular, many said they were not confident delivering the one to one sessions even after training, and some found that the reading comprehension elements sometimes failed to hold pupils' attention. Findings from this study have moderate to low security. The study was designed as a single randomised controlled trial which aimed to compare the progress of pupils who received the interventions with that of similar pupils who did not. However, the original design had to be changed because of delays in recruiting schools, meaning that the trial was run in two separate phases. Both REACH interventions had a positive effect on the reading skills and reading accuracy of the pupils in the trial. Pupils receiving the reading intervention with language comprehension experienced the equivalent of about six months of additional progress. For pupils receiving the standard reading intervention the figure was four months. These effects are unlikely to have occurred by chance.
04/13/2021. Research Study
This project tested the Improving Working Memory intervention (WM) and an adapted version, entitled the Working Memory Plus intervention (WM+). Working memory is the ability to remember and manipulate information over short time-frames. Previous research has suggested that working memory is a reliable predictor of numeracy outcomes. The Improving Working Memory intervention aimed to improve the numeracy skills of Year 3 pupils (aged 7-8) who were behind the class average in numeracy by improving their working memory capacity. The intervention, developed and previously tested by a team at Oxford University, combined the explicit teaching of working memory strategies by Teaching Assistants (TAs) and the independent practice of these strategies using web-based games. The intervention was delivered in ten one-hour sessions and lasted for one term. The Working Memory Plus intervention also had ten sessions, but only five were focused on working memory, whilst the other five were focused on arithmetic content. The project was a randomised controlled trial (RCT). 127 schools participated, being randomised at the school-level to one of three arms – the Improving Working Memory intervention, the Working Memory Plus intervention, or a business as usual control group. The primary outcome was maths attainment and the project also looked at working memory, and attention and behaviour in class as secondary outcomes. The process evaluation included fieldwork with eight intervention schools (four from each intervention), and an online survey of treatment and control schools. The trial took place between September 2016 and July 2017.
04/13/2021. Research Study
The Perry Beeches Coaching Programme aimed to improve the reading and writing skills of Year 7 pupils with low levels of attainment in four English secondary schools. Across the project, 16 coaches were employed to provide academic support to pupils who had not reached level 4c in English at the end of Key Stage 2. Originally it had been intended that pupils would only receive one to one support, and that all coaches would be graduates. However, in practice pupils received a range of targeted support that varied between schools and most, but not all, coaches were graduates. The programme built on a successful pilot in Perry Beeches Academy in Birmingham, and the school co-ordinated the project across participating schools. The approach was based on a one to one coaching programme used in Match Charter School in Boston, USA. This project sought to assess the impact of the programme on the academic outcomes of 186 students who were offered support during the 2013–2014 school year. The study was funded by the Education Endowment Foundation as one of 24 projects in a themed round on literacy catch-up at the primary–secondary transition. Projects funded within this round aimed to identify effective ways to support pupils not achieving level 4 in English at the end of Key Stage 2.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Catch Up Literacyeracy is a structured one-to-one literacy intervention for pupils between the ages of 6 and 14 who are struggling to learn to read. It teaches pupils to blend phonemes, segment phonemes, and memorize particular words so they can be understood without needing to use phonics strategies to decode them. The intervention matches books to pupils according to their reading ability, which pupils then read to a teaching assistant, so is intended to also support the development of their comprehension skills.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Shared Maths is a form of cross-age peer tutoring, developed at Durham University, where older pupils (Year 5/Year 6) work with younger pupils (Year 3/Year 4) to discuss and work through maths problems using a structured approach. The intervention structures interactions between the two pupils to enable the younger pupils (the tutee) to find solutions to maths problems. The older pupils (the tutor) use strategies such as questioning, thinking out loud, praise, and reviewing strategies to gain a deeper understanding of mathematics. The intervention was delivered by teachers, with training and support from a Local Co-ordinator in each of four participating local authorities (Leeds, Medway, Durham and Worcester). Participating pupils spent 20 minutes each week using the approach, for two blocks of 16 weeks over consecutive years. An effectiveness trial assessed the impact of the project on the progress in terms of mathematics of 6,472 pupils (3,305 in Year 3 and 3,167 in Year 5) in 82 primary schools across four local authorities with 40 schools randomly allocated to receive the programme and 42 schools allocated to the control condition. The control schools received the intervention after the intervention schools had completed the project.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Rapid Phonics is a synthetic phonics intervention intended to improve decoding skills and reading fluency. It teaches the relationship of word sounds to their corresponding letter groups in a structured way. In this evaluation, the intervention was delivered across the transition between primary and secondary school to Year 6/7 pupils who had not reached Level 4b in English at the end of Key Stage 2. Rapid Phonics pupils received one-and-a-half hours of tuition per week, in groups of four or fewer, by specialist teachers from Norfolk County Council. The intervention was delivered over six weeks in the summer term of 2013 (end of primary school) and six weeks in the autumn term of 2013 (start of secondary school) to 201 pupils from 22 primary schools and then in 13 secondary schools across Norfolk. Pupils were individually randomised to receive the intervention or to a waitlist control group, who received the intervention at the end of the trial. Key conclusions include: (1) Rapid Phonics was not found to have a noticeable impact on the primary outcome measure of reading comprehension at the end of the intervention; (2) There was a small improvement in the secondary outcome of decoding, but this did not reach statistical significance; (3) Conducting the intervention during the last term of Year 6 and the first term of Year 7 was not the most settled period as there were many disruptions in the school environment and conditions may not have been best suited for the children to respond optimally to tutoring; (4) Continuing the intervention from primary to secondary schools can be logistically problematic, with a number of children transferring to schools outside the project or changing secondary school soon after arrival; and (5) An area of further research would be to employ the intervention in one continuous period at an earlier point in primary school, using a larger sample size and with more focus on children receiving free school meals and upon SEN. No positive effect size was found for the primary outcome of reading comprehension. A small positive effect size was found for the other secondary outcome of non-word reading, but not for the secondary outcome of single word reading. None of the measures were found to be statistically significant, suggesting that there is not sufficient evidence to confidently conclude that the observed effect was caused by the programme rather than occurring by chance. As a result, it is not clear that Rapid Phonics is an effective intervention for improving reading comprehension for pupils who have not achieved the expected level of attainment in literacy at the end of primary school, when delivered across the primary/secondary transition.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Affordable Maths Tuition is a one to one tutoring programme where pupils receive maths tuition over the internet from trained maths graduates in India and Sri Lanka. It is delivered by the organisation Third Space Learning (TSL). Tutors and pupils communicate using video calling and a secure virtual classroom. Before each session, the pupils’ normal classroom teachers are able to select lessons from Third Space Learning’s maths curriculum to target individual learning issues. In this evaluation, the tutoring sessions took place once a week, at the same time each week. The intervention was targeted at Year 6 pupils who were working at Key Stage 2 level 3 or an insecure KS2 level 4, and was delivered over 27 weeks from September 2014 to May 2015 by Third Space Learning (TSL) in an initial testing phase, with support from Nesta and Nominet Trust. The impact of the intervention was evaluated using a randomised controlled trial design, involving 64 schools and 600 pupils. Schools were randomised to either receive the intervention or deliver 'business as usual’ teaching, which might have involved intensive one to one support for maths. A process evaluation was undertaken to understand the perceptions of teachers and pupils, assess whether the intervention was delivered as intended, and inform any future development of the intervention. The evaluation should be considered an efficacy trial. Efficacy trials aim to test whether the intervention can succeed under ideal conditions.
04/13/2021. Research Study
Butterfly Phonics aims to improve the reading of struggling pupils through phonics instruction and a formal teaching style where pupils sit at desks in rows facing the teacher. It is based on a course book created by Irina Tyk, and was delivered in this evaluation by Real Action, a charity based in London. Real Action staff recruited and trained practitioners to deliver the intervention. These practitioners worked with trained teaching assistants to teach classes of six to eight pupils, although some groups were larger. Pupils were eligible for participation in the trial if they did not reach level 4 in their Key Stage 2 SATs or their reading skills were at least a year behind their chronological age. The evaluation was set up as a randomised controlled trial, which compared the progress of pupils who received Butterfly Phonics to a "business-as-usual" control group. Key conclusions include: (1) This evaluation provided evidence of promise; there was a positive, statistically significant effect on the primary outcome measure of reading comprehension. However, this effect size was lower than the minimum detectable effect size of the trial, so we cannot confidently conclude that the effect was due to the intervention and did not occur by chance; (2) The secondary outcome measures indicated positive impacts on children's literacy skills, but these were not statistically significant; (3) This intervention is recommended to take place during the school day, when it is easier to secure sustained co-operation and support from school staff. Where that support was present, the intervention was able to progress more satisfactorily than in schools where it was lacking; (4) Schools should ensure that people delivering the intervention receive training in the Butterfly method so that it is implemented as intended; and (5) Further research could investigate the intervention's impact on early readers. Its emphasis on larger word units and comprehension skills might enable a more rapid progression in early reading than a pure phonics course. [The project was independently evaluated by a team from the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) and the Wolfson Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University.]
04/13/2021. Research Study
The purposes of this study were to (a) investigate the efficacy of a core fraction intervention program on understanding and calculation skill and (b) isolate the effects of different forms of fraction word-problem (WP) intervention delivered as part of the larger program. At-risk 4th graders (n = 213) were randomly assigned at the individual level to receive the school's business-as-usual program or 1 of 2 variants of the core fraction intervention (each 12 weeks, 3 sessions/week). In each session of the 2 variants, 28 min were identical, focused mainly on the measurement interpretation of fractions. The other 7 min addressed fraction WPs: multiplicative WPs versus additive WPs. Children were pre- and posttested on fraction understanding, calculations, and WPs. On understanding and calculations, both intervention conditions outperformed the control group, and the effect of intervention versus control on released fraction items from the National Assessment of Education Progress were mediated by children's improvement in the measurement interpretation of fractions. On multiplicative WPs, multiplicative WP intervention was superior to the other 2 conditions, but additive WP intervention and the control group performed comparably. By contrast, on additive WPs, there was a step-down effect in which additive WP intervention was superior to multiplicative WP intervention, which was superior to control. [This paper was published in "Elementary School Journal," v116 n4 p625-661 Jun 2016 (EJ1103953).]
04/13/2021. Research Study
The Tutor Trust is a Manchester-based charity that aims to provide affordable small group and one-toone tuition to primary and secondary schools. It recruits and trains university students and recent graduates as paid tutors, which enables it to provide tuition at a competitive rate. This project aimed to use Tutor Trust tuition to improve the maths attainment of pupils in Year 6 (aged 10–11) who were working below age-expected levels in maths, as identified by their class teachers. Children received 12 hours of tuition, usually one hour per week for 12 weeks. Schools had flexibility over the timing of sessions and group size. The vast majority of schools opted for pupils to be tutored in groups of three, and for sessions to take place during school hours. One hundred and five schools in Manchester and Leeds participated in this effectiveness trial from September 2016 until July 2017. Schools in the trial had twice the national average of pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM). Tuition was delivered between January and May 2017. The programme was evaluated using a randomised controlled trial design, comparing children working below age-expected levels in maths across treatment and control schools. Of a total of 4,436 Year 6 pupils, 1,290 were identified by their teachers to receive the tutoring, should their school be allocated to the intervention group. Attainment was measured using Key Stage 2 (KS2) maths scores. Observations, interviews, teacher surveys, and pupil focus groups were conducted to explore how the programme was implemented and to obtain feedback from participants. The trial was funded by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)
04/13/2021. Research Study
This pilot study examined the efficacy of a Tier 2 first-grade mathematics intervention program targeting whole-number understanding for students at risk in mathematics. The study used a randomized block design. Students (N 89) were randomly assigned to treatment (Fusion) or control (standard district practice) conditions. Measures of mathematics achievement were collected at pretest and posttest. Treatment and control students did not differ on mathematics assessments at pretest. A series of random-effects models were estimated to compare gains between treatment and control conditions. Gain scores of intervention students were significantly greater than those of control peers on a proximal measure of mathematics achievement. The role of a strong theory-ofchange model in the development and evaluation of mathematics interventions is articulated. Implications for researchers and educators designing and delivering instruction for at-risk students in a response-to-intervention model are discussed.
04/13/2021. Research Study
The purpose of this study was to assess whether intervention with an integrated focus on fraction and decimal magnitude provides added value in improving rational number performance over intervention focused exclusively on fractions. We randomly assigned 4th graders with poor whole-number performance to 3 conditions: a business-as-usual control group and 2 variants of a validated fraction magnitude (FM) intervention. One variant of FM intervention included an integrated component on fraction-decimal magnitude (FM+DM); the other included a fraction applications component (FM+FAPP) to more closely mirror the validated FM intervention and to control for intervention time. Cross-classified partially-nested analyses (N=225) provided the basis for 3 conclusions. First, FM intervention improves 4th-graders' fraction understanding and applications. Second, effects of FM intervention, even without a focus on decimals, transfer to decimal number line performance. Third, an intervention component integrating fraction-decimal magnitude does not provide added value over FM intervention on fraction or decimal performance, except on decimal tasks paralleling intervention tasks. [This is the in press version of an article published in "Contemporary Educational Psychology."]
04/13/2021. Research Study
In this article, the authors summarize results from 5 randomized controlled trials assessing the effects of intervention to improve the fraction performance of fourth-grade students at risk for difficulty in learning about fractions. The authors begin by explaining the importance of competence with fractions and why an instructional focus on fractions magnitude understanding may improve learning. They then describe an intervention that relies strongly on this type of understanding about fractions instruction, and they provide an overview of the intervention’s overall effects. This is followed by an overview of 5 intervention components for which the authors isolated effects. They conclude by discussing some of the lessons learned from this research program.