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CityTutor DC leads a coalition of schools, tutoring providers, universities, caregivers, and government stakeholders in the effort to serve students in Washington, DC with high-impact tutoring.
CityTutor DC was founded in early 2021 to address systemic inequities that disproportionately impact students of color, which includes thousands of students here in DC that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Local and national stakeholders recognized the need for a coordinated solution to accelerate students.
CityTutor DC partners with 90+ schools, tutoring providers, colleges/universities, and community-based organizations to expand the scope and impact of quality tutoring opportunities for DC’s students. We aim to support Kindergarten through 12th grade public school students with high-impact tutoring.
Though CityTutor DC was created as a response to the pandemic, the systems and relationships we have invested in will take us beyond recovery to build a brighter future for all students.
CityTutor DC is an initiative of CityBridge Education, a nonprofit that incubates the people, ideas, and conversations needed for equity-driven innovation in DC’s schools.
The care that tutors show fuels the motivation necessary for students to move forward academically. When a tutor takes the time to get to know who the student is and how the student learns best, attendance and engagement follow.
The quality of tutors is key to helping students make academic progress, so they must be selected, trained and managed carefully. Tutors need to have a solid knowledge of the subject matter they are teaching, which should be built at minimum by a thorough training on the curriculum to be used, as well as close supervision and ongoing feedback to become more effective.
The curriculum that tutors use with students should be aligned with school lessons and grounded in high-quality research. Scripted lessons specifically designed for tutors are best to use with students, acknowledging that not all tutors have as much pedagogical content knowledge as teachers.
At a minimum, students should receive 90 minutes of tutoring per week, in multiple sessions per week, for 10 weeks to be most effective. Research has shown that the more frequently and consistently tutoring occurs (dosage), the greater effect on student learning, provided that the tutoring meets other standards for quality.
Tutoring sessions should ideally have one to four students, as it allows a tutor to personalize instruction for each student. As group size increases, however, tutors have less time to customize instruction and must spend more time on student engagement.
Students receiving tutoring should be regularly assessed using high-quality, curriculum-aligned assessments. The data gathered from those assessments should be used to adapt what tutors work on with students. That assessment data, along with other key data (e.g. attendance, test scores, student satisfaction surveys), should be used for continuous improvement.
Ideally, tutoring should be embedded into the school day schedule but tutoring can also take place in other out-of-school time settings as long as efforts are made to connect what tutors are doing with what students are learning in school. Prioritizing deep connections between school and tutoring enables tutors, teachers and administrators to work together to help students succeed.
CityTutor DC is also focused on incorporating caregiver engagement to foster uptake, consistency and satisfaction; learning how to best support tutoring hubs and schools through curriculum; and expanding observation and feedback loops to improve the practice of tutoring.
Learn about the 90+ schools, tutoring providers, colleges/universities, and community-based organizations working together to expand the scope and impact of quality tutoring opportunities for DC’s students.
After a year of connecting, designing, supporting, and brokering, we have demonstrated how to build a tutoring ecosystem that serves students furthest from opportunity and that will last beyond the context of pandemic recovery.
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