Harnett County Schools in central North Carolina has 20,100 students today, but not for long.
The school district is the sixth-fastest growing district in the state with a growing population of English language learners. Coupled with academic challenges in aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the district has experienced plenty of growing pains, especially in student achievement.
The district’s story of how it turned to high-dosage tutoring to address its challenges was shared at an AASA conference session on Saturday morning titled “Providing High-Impact Tutoring Without Overburdening Teachers.”
High-impact tutoring in schools is a proven strategy to help kids learn, far more effective than standard tutoring models. More than 150 studies have found that “intensive, relationship-based” tutoring results in major learning gains for students, according to the National Student Support Accelerator.
Yet amid teacher retention issues, a labor shortage and difficulty finding multilingual instructors, those high-touch programs can be difficult for school districts, including Harnett County, to provide, according to Jermaine H. White III, assistant superintendent of the Harnett County Schools. White was one of the session presenters.
Harnett said the district considered how best to build its own high-impact tutoring program by centering their examination and search for answers on several key factors. They decided students with learning needs had to work consistently with the same tutor, someone with expertise in not just teaching but also relationship building. The tutor also must be embedded into the schools either before, during or after the school day to ensure it reaches students who need the most academic help.
At the same time, a selected program for the schools cannot lead to overburdening already overworked teachers and school staff. White joked that he’s more than familiar with the eye rolls from teachers when district leadership attend a teacher meeting to promote the next best thing.
White said: “We don't want to put anything more on their plate that's going to put them in a position to say, ‘You know what? I just don't want to do this. I don't see the value in it. It's just too much. Just leave us alone.’”
To support teachers and students, Harnett County eventually landed on the Paper platform, a proprietary program, to provide high-touch tutoring for its students. Paper provides virtual tutoring with real instructors and multilingual support in English, Spanish, French and Mandarin.
At first, the school district partnered with the company to provide unlimited, 24/7 tutoring to students, free of charge. In spring 2024, the district helped test Paper’s GROW High-Impact Tutoring with notable results.
Seventy predominantly English language learners in 6th and 7th grades were assigned tutors through the program to work on math. The district’s use of the GROW program last fall led to student achievement gains.
Participating 6th graders saw an average increase in their beginning-of-the-year and middle-of-the-year i-Ready assessment scores of about 18 points. Seventh graders gained an average of 9.3 points. Students also reported feeling more confident and engaged in the classroom.
Results like those have helped to minimize or eliminate the skepticism some school staff may have had about deploying another new program. Teachers now see the tutors as a partner to supporting students, White said. And students apparently love it too.
“For me, from an impact perspective, the smile on a child’s face means everything to me,” White said. “And when they’re able to participate in something that they believe in and they’re able to have a conversation with their teacher and the parent about wanting to come to school and participate in something, that makes all the difference to me.”
(Sarah Lindenfeld Hall, a freelance writer in Raleigh, N.C., is a senior editor on Conference Daily Online.)
