School Principals were historically seen as school managers rather than facilitators of academic learning. But, over the last decade or more, we’ve seen a major shift in principals’ roles as leaders and understand how their leadership impacts student achievement. To meet State and district goals, principals are effective when leading collaboratively and empowering others to succeed. Now, more than ever, school principals and leaders must work with their teachers and staff to help meet academic needs in the classroom, often with fewer resources than they need.
With the learning loss after COVID-19 and mounting staffing shortages, principals must examine how they can promote productive learning, close opportunity gaps, and increase student achievement without overburdening classroom teachers.
Principals Can Promote Productive Learning with High-impact Tutoring
Principals can promote productive learning and increase academic achievement by implementing proven educational solutions. One proven method to dramatically increase learning and achievement is high-impact tutoring. By implementing high-impact tutoring into the school day for all students, principals can help accelerate student learning and increase instructional support for teachers without the need for additional hiring.How Does High-Impact Tutoring Work in the Classroom?
High-impact tutoring consists of three weekly small-group sessions for 30-50 minutes. These sessions are scheduled into regular classroom time and facilitated by a trained tutor delivering a data-driven curriculum. The students and tutor remain with the same groups for the entire academic year. Students benefit from the additional classroom support and the consistent relationship with the tutor. In turn, classroom teachers can focus on instruction, individual help, and more during tutoring sessions. This gives teachers some of their classroom time back and helps improve student outcomes, making their large-group instruction more productive and accessible. When teachers have more capacity to do their work, they can more readily meet the goals set by their principals and districts.High-impact Tutoring Can Address Teacher Shortages & Burnout While Improving Outcomes
The issues facing today’s public schools are complex, and teachers are shouldered with far more than simply teaching the day’s lessons. A common concern among principals and school leaders is a lack of human capital. In many districts, teachers are overwhelmed by expectations to remediate learning, teach current material, and meet benchmarks for success while understaffed or underfunded. Successful principals can recognize the signs of a burnt-out staff and address them with meaningful initiatives and interventions. Another way to alleviate the burden on teachers is to create collaborative solutions to improve student outcomes so teachers have support to meet learning goals. No one solution can solve every problem US schools face. Often, these solutions must be district or school-wide rather than targeted toward individuals to have widespread success. However, some are proven to address specific problems so well that the benefits extend beyond their direct applications. One of these is high-impact tutoring. The University of Chicago Urban Labs rigorously evaluated Saga Education’s High-impact Tutoring program via large-scale randomized controlled trials. Here’s what they found:- Students learn up to 2.5 years’ worth of math in one academic year.
- The opportunity gap is closed by nearly 50% in one academic year.
- Math course failures are reduced by as much as 63%.
- Course failures in non-tutored subjects are reduced by as much as 26%.
- Student attendance improves by as much as 18 days per academic year.