He said the district has set just north of $3 million in the budget for next year to continue the program, expecting some students won't need the same level of support. Though the school year is far from over, Muri believes the success of the program will be reflected in MAP assessments at the conclusion of the year. And that's really been the reason we've been successful.” “It's a very formalized and pretty tight process that we use to ensure effectiveness. The tutors themselves work with our teachers to understand the specific needs of children,” Muri said.
We receive weekly updates from the tutoring companies on each student. Explaining the specific amount of time, Muri pointed to research that says 60 hours of tutoring per year is the threshold to see effects in a student’s performance. For the year, students will have 60 hours of tutoring sessions. Focusing on reading and math, the tutor goes through the school curriculum while a teacher or staff member from the student's school supervises. Each student is assigned a tutor for the year, and they carve out 30 minutes to an hour per session, which can be held before, during or after school, Muri said. The program launched for all students at the beginning of this academic year. The less student progress, the less money. Essentially, the more academic growth it measures in students, the more money ECISD pays the virtual tutoring companies, with a cap at $6.1 million. ECISD now works with four virtual tutoring companies, paying them based on student progress determined by a tool created by NWEA called the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP. The school district committed $6.1 million to the program, aimed at helping disadvantaged communities most impacted by the pandemic, including students who experienced the biggest learning drop. "You see that much more in the business world, but (school districts) simply buy a product and hope for the best, if you will, and that's not a good practice,” he said. It was outside-the-box thinking, Muri said - the idea of paying a service based on results is “not something we typically do in education." Things went well in a pilot program with one middle school, so Muri expanded the concept throughout the district, with 6,000 students in elementary, middle and high schools - about 20 percent of the district's students - taking part in the program. Muri then had the district participate in a program spearheaded by Harvard University that focused on one-on-one, outcome-based tutoring in a virtual setting, connecting students with tutors remotely instead of limiting them to those who were locally available. After addressing that issue and bringing back kids into the classroom, Muri said, there was still a significant number of absences and, even with virtual options, the district wasn’t meeting kids' needs the way it hoped to. One of the most urgent tasks facing K-12 schools today is to get students caught up, and the Ector County Independent School District in Odessa, Texas, is finding success with a virtual tutoring program.ĮCISD Superintendent Scott Muri told Government Technology that the district struggled at the onset of the pandemic to bring broadband to the community. Several studies, like one conducted by the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), found that previously lower-achieving students fell furthest behind, and even where students made progress, they made less of it than under pre-pandemic "normal" circumstances. The online program Zearn Math, used by some 6 million elementary students, found those from low-income ZIP codes regressed in math by more than 11 percent. In Georgia, where students had the option to opt out of assessments, 40 percent of eighth graders didn't even take the test. In Maryland, just 15 percent of public school students passed the math portion of their annual assessments last year, and 35 percent passed in English. Most K-12 students are back in class, and verdicts about how the past two years of disruption impacted their education have been rolling in: negatively, across the board.
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