K-12 teacher shortages — one of the most disputed questions in education policy today — are an undeniable reality in some communities, a newly released study indicates. But they are also a hyper-local phenomenon, the authors write, with fully staffed schools existing in close proximity to those that struggle to hire and retain teachers.

The paper, circulated Thursday through Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, uses a combination of survey responses and statewide administrative records from Tennessee to create a framework for identifying how and where teacher shortages emerge. 

The Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University reports that supplementing classroom instruction with high-impact tutoring “leads to substantial learning gains for students.” However, a variety of factors can influence the way educational institutions need to implement tutoring programs. To illustrate how schools or districts can customize a tutoring program to meet their specific needs, FEV Tutor has published a white paper titled “High-Impact Online Tutoring for Academic Success: An Afterschool Implementation.”

Additionally, the Annenberg Institute at Brown University will study the lessons learned from RIDE’s work and other states to create a policy report on how to develop a replicable, state-level model for scaling and sustaining high-impact tutoring. High-impact tutoring, also known as “high-dosage tutoring,” involves tutoring a consistent group of students multiple times a week and has been shown to have a dramatic impact on accelerating student learning. 

In a recent study, we report on the implementation of opt-in, on-demand tutoring in partnership with the Aspire Public Schools (a charter management organization, or CMO) in California. The CMO provided 7,000 middle and high school students with free, unlimited access to one-on-one chat-based tutoring during the spring 2021 semester. Students accessed the program from a mobile device and could request help from an available tutor in any core subject. The topic of each tutoring session was usually driven by student questions and the interaction between tutors and students were chat-based with help from a virtual whiteboard to facilitate joint work.

“Teachers in different schools, in different subject areas, in different districts have very different experiences with their professional learning,” said John Papay, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown and a co-author of the paper. “Some of it, we know, can be effective, and some of it, we know, isn’t effective. The challenge is, how do we maintain this investment in and emphasis on professional learning and teacher development throughout the career while also working to make it more effective?”

We are so excited to share with you a copy of RPPL's new brief, Building Better PL: How to Strengthen Teacher Learning by senior researchers Heather Hill and John Papay. The brief was featured in Ed Week this morning. This is the second piece in RPPL’s research series, following our brief from earlier this year, Dispelling the Myths: What the Research Says About Teacher Professional Learning.

With reading and math scores plummeting during the pandemic, educators and parents are now turning their attention to how kids can catch up. In the following Q&A, Susanna Loeb, an education economist at Brown University, shines a light on the best ways to use tutoring to help students get back on track.

At EdResearch, our goal is to provide educators with the specific, practical advice – grounded in evidence – that they need to best support their students. We choose the topics of our briefs based on what educators tell us they need most, whether it’s guidance on High-Dosage Tutoring, Summer Learning or K-4 Literacy. We seek out the expertise of researchers to inform evidence-based practice in schools, and the wisdom of educators to build practice-based evidence.

As students return to school for the first time in three years without most COVID precautions in place, the impact of the pandemic lingers on in our nation’s classrooms. Educators, who work tirelessly to ensure students are cared for and academically challenged, face ongoing, unprecedented challenges as they seek to accelerate learning.

Recent data shows significant (and expected) declines in students’ academic proficiency as a result of missed instruction.¹ However, thanks to a historic federal investment in education, schools have an opportunity to drive bold improvement efforts. Guided by a belief that this funding has the potential to dramatically improve learning experiences, the Rennie Center and EdResearch partnered with five Massachusetts districts to improve alignment of their existing programs and investments with evidence-based strategies.

State takeovers don’t work.  

Researchers at Brown University’s Annenberg Institute examined takeovers starting in the late 1980s using 5 sources of data, including the NAEPs.  Their conclusion:  “Overall, we find no evidence that state takeover improves academic achievement.”

Still, school/district takeovers have become more frequent, including the recent near-takeover of Boston’s schools resulting from a highly critical review.  In 2019 Rhode Island’s Department of Education (RIDE) took control of the Providence Public School District (PPSD) after our even more painful Johns Hopkins report.  

Pearl's data, research and analysis partners include the Annenberg Institute at Brown University  with a mission to equalize and improve educational opportunities through actionable knowledge, human development and broad engagement and its National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA). Both organizations consulted with ISU and ITI in the planning and development, and establishing success metrics for the statewide tutoring program.