State Policy Initiatives to Fast Track Expansion of High-Dosage Tutoring

During this webinar, part of our Learning Loss Recovery Challenge series, moderated by John Gomperts, former President and CEO of America’s Promise Alliance, we learned from Jeremy Anderson, President of Education Commission of the States, about trends in state policies and governors’ education priorities in response to the pandemic and how tutoring is emerging as a major strategy to address learning loss. Anderson’s presentation was followed by a viewing of an excerpt of 50CAN’s recent forum, “Tutoring as an Emergency Response,” which highlights emerging policies in Tennessee, Connecticut and Colorado. State and local leaders from the GLR Network, including Christiane Buggs, United Way of Greater Nashville; Jennifer Stedron, Early Milestones Colorado; Terri Clark, Read On Arizona; and Ken Zeff, Learn4Life, Metro Atlanta, shared their reactions and commentary on Anderson’s presentation and the 50CAN Forum and discussed how these policies relate to their early learning and literacy work as well as additional policy developments in their states.

This week’s learning opportunity picked up on a series we launched in December that focused on high-dosage tutoring as an effective and urgently needed strategy to mitigate learning loss, continuing in January with sessions examining both national data about the detrimental effects of COVID-19 on children and promising responses like high-dosage tutoring. (Links to all previous sessions below.) As spring arrives and we plan for summer, tutoring is gaining more traction and attention, with a growing number of state policy- and decision-makers, as demonstrated in this week’s session, now taking action to designate funding and directives to expand access to tutoring — especially for the young students most in need. As an extremely important pillar in our work to advance early school success, CGLR will continue to explore the various elements and factors that can enable expanded access and ensure effective implementation of tutoring as a critical strategy to get children back on track both academically and developmentally.