Standards for High-Impact Tutoring

Foundational values: Students, families, and communities at the center

Tutoring must be grounded in deep respect for students, families, and communities. Tutoring is an additional resource that complements the resources students already have available to them. For any tutoring initiative to be effective and sustainable, it must activate and build on these resources.

These foundational values precede the what and the how of tutoring. They should be visible in all that tutoring organizations are doing.

More specifically, tutoring organizations must ensure that students are:

• Safe: Tutors must not only ensure the physical security of the young people with whom they work, but also make them feel psychologically safe, such that they can explore difficult subjects.
• Confident: Tutors must always build on young people’s own sense of potential and purpose, seeing themselves as capable learners who can surmount challenges.
• Connected: Tutors draw on and draw in family and community resources and wisdom, so that tutoring is a seamless part of a larger fabric. This work of connection will create the sense of belonging that enables young people to flourish.

In addition, tutoring organizations should:

• Build with families and communities: The design and implementation of tutoring initiatives should draw on how families and communities see the challenge and what they know will work.
• Draw on family and community members to serve as tutors and partners in tutoring: With investment and training, families and communities can contribute even more to helping their young people thrive.