To say the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic interrupted the daily routine of education across the United States would be putting it lightly. Schools have switched from in-person instruction to remote learning and back again as the number of coronavirus cases have waxed and waned. Many parents held their children out of in-person classes for the entirety of the 2020-2021 school year due to understandable concerns about placing unvaccinated students together in close quarters. These disruptions have left a noticeable mark, statistically and anecdotally, on students.
Last fall the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) reported drops of nearly 17 and 18 percent, respectively, in the number of students meeting grade-level standards in English language arts and math between 2019 and 2021. The Chicago Tribune noted that one in five Illinois students were chronically absent during the 2020–2021 school year, a 21 percent increase from 2019.
Appears InIllinois State’s College of Education (COE) is leading the Illinois Tutoring Initiative, a $25 million federally funded program created to close the learning chasm created during the pandemic by offering high-impact tutoring at schools across the state.
“What we learned through COVID is that face-to-face, personal contact with students really impacts their ability to gain new content,” said Tutoring Initiative Director Dr. Christy Borders. “And so we call it learning disruption rather than learning loss, because part of that is thinking about, ‘Well, did they really move backward or was their learning paused?’ What we want to do with high-impact tutoring is take them from where they’re at and get them moving forward again. High-impact tutoring is one of the only research-based interventions that has shown impacts in both reading and math across multiple grade levels.”
The University is the central office for the Illinois Tutoring Initiative in partnership with the Governor’s Office, the ISBE, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and the Illinois Community College Board. ISU is one of six regional hiring institutions, along with Governor’s State University, Illinois Central College, Northern Illinois University, Southeastern Illinois Community College, and Southern Illinois University.
Borders is at the epicenter of this daunting two-year endeavor. The former director of ISU’s Cecilia J. Lauby Teacher Education Center and her colleague Kim Champion were tasked with creating the novel tutoring program, with an initial goal to provide math and reading tutors to thousands of students, in grades three through eight. This effort is requiring the University and its partners to screen, hire, train, and place tutors in schools most impacted by the pandemic.
“The COVID outbreak has revealed and widened existing educational disparities. High-impact tutoring is evidence-based in responding to students’ individual needs and proven to accelerate learning.”
—Kim Champion
Champion, the program’s Institutional Partner Office coordinator, hopes the Tutoring Initiative will benefit students and teachers alike: “The COVID outbreak has revealed and widened existing educational disparities. High-impact tutoring is evidence-based in responding to students’ individual needs and proven to accelerate learning.”
Illinois State was chosen as the lead agency because of a plan put forward in summer 2021 by then COE Dean Dr. Jim Wolfinger, which was based in part on the Cecilia J. Lauby Teacher Education Center’s creation of an e-tutoring program during the pandemic. That smaller-scale program placed Illinois State teacher candidates as online tutors for families and students across the state.
Funding for the Tutoring Initiative was released in fall 2021, and tutors began working in some schools the following March. In those few short months, Borders worked with colleagues across the University to develop an evidence-based approach known as high-impact tutoring.
The program—influenced by research conducted at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute—is designed for tutors to meet one-one-one or with groups of no more than three students for one hour, three times a week for eight to 14 weeks. Lessons are tied to what students are learning in the classroom.
Eight Illinois State faculty members—from the Departments of Math (Dr. Jeffrey Barrett), Psychology (Drs. Gary Cates and Shengtian Wu), and Special Education (Drs. Carrie Anna Courtad and Jeongae Kang), and the School of Teaching and Learning (Drs. Courtney Hattan, Deborah MacPhee, and Steve Mertens)—served as research fellows to design the tutoring program, create the online training modules, and develop processes that allow tutors to receive feedback. The fellows also created a system for collecting data at the different tutoring sites.
“Now they are preparing to identify additional research studies that they may conduct as part of it,” Borders said. “The research team’s sole purpose is program evaluation and determining outcome statements for how students and tutors are doing in the initiative.”
Some research fellows will assess the overall effectiveness of the tutoring programs. Others like Barrett, a professor of mathematics education, focus on narrower questions. He is examining how to guide, support, and develop math tutors.
“It’s a challenge to get the workforce in place,” Barrett said. “Let’s assume we get the workforce in place and we have the tutors engaged. Our challenge in terms of research is to learn from this situation and do better with what we understand about tutoring. There’s a hole in the research literature in my opinion.”
There are many studies that show tutoring students who struggle is advantageous, rather than not tutoring them, Barrett said. However, there is not much known about the characteristics of great tutoring and how to help people become better tutors. “If we could hire all perfect tutors, that’d be great. I don’t think we can,” Barrett said. “So our research comes from, What are we going to do to support the tutors?”
The program plans to use a process called “lesson study” to help tutors collaborate and study important ideas about teaching mathematics and literacy, Barrett said.
“My research history here at ISU has been about how we can help kids and teachers grow. So this is a natural for me to want to know how can we help tutors grow,” he said. “It’s a long-term investment because it might not immediately fix the tutors. Hopefully, we’re contributing to the knowledge base so that four or five years from now somebody can look at a paper and say, ‘Let’s set that up so that we start our tutors growing right at the beginning, and then over time, we’ll have a stronger workforce.”
“Some people may think that anybody can tutor—just go to meet a kid at the library and go through their homework. This isn’t that, and so we want to be able to pay well for the hard work involved in high-impact tutoring.”
—Dr. Christy Borders
Tutors are paid $50 per hour.. They are also compensated for their training, travel, and prep work. Successful candidates only need a clean background check and a high school diploma or the equivalent.
“We’re trying to remove the barriers that would prevent someone from taking a high-intensity position,” Borders said. “Some people may think that anybody can tutor—just go to meet a kid at the library and go through their homework. This isn’t that, and so we want to be able to pay well for the hard work involved in high-impact tutoring.”
Illinois State University students began tutoring eighth graders like Fischer Killian in math last spring at Bloomington Junior High School. Killian offered a blunt assessment of remote learning during the pandemic.
“It was terrible,” Killian said.
Killian took his courses online from home the previous year. Speaking through a Spider-Man-branded face covering, he talked about the haphazard and boring nature of the lessons and how easily he could duck out of class. He was clear about what he hopes to get out of the tutoring sessions. “Human interaction, which is something I really need.”
“The tutoring is just a fantastic added piece of support. It can build that relationship with that adult. The students can ask questions that maybe they don’t feel comfortable in class asking, and can get clarification, understanding, and confidence to get back in the classroom and feel on par with the rest of their peers.”
—Diane Gallucci
Diane Gallucci ’96, M.S.E. ’01, an eighth-grade teacher who is coordinating the tutoring program at the junior high, thinks the tutors will assist teachers in closing the learning gap and help meet the students’ needs.
“I think our staff does a fantastic job of teaching and trying to bridge those gaps that are there. The tutoring is just a fantastic added piece of support. It can build that relationship with that adult. The students can ask questions that maybe they don’t feel comfortable in class asking, and can get clarification, understanding, and confidence to get back in the classroom and feel on par with the rest of their peers.”
