Op-ed: How DC can support students during COVID-19
Imagine you’re an elementary school student this year. Since last March, you haven’t been able to see your friends. You love your teacher, but it’s been hard to get one-on-one time with her since you’ve spent most of the year in a virtual classroom with more than 20 other students. Internet connection at home isn’t stable. You feel frustrated, disconnected and unmotivated with virtual learning.
In order to effectively support students during and beyond the pandemic, we need to meet them where they are. We need to acknowledge what they are feeling, to build trusting relationships, and to make learning feel more relevant to their specific experiences. One of the best ways to do this is expensive but proven to be very effective: individualized tutoring. Many wealthier families have already been paying this for themselves.
Expanding individualized opportunities to more families in DC may no longer be a pipe dream. Testimonies in favor of “high-dosage tutoring”- tutoring groups of six students or fewer for four or more days per week- have been given by the deputy mayor for education, the deputy chancellor for social emotional and academic development at DC Public Schools (DCPS), and the executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board. Tutoring is part of a $33 million block of funding introduced by DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee and Mayor Muriel Bowser as part of the proposed “Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund” in the school system’s fiscal year 2022 budget.
I adamantly support this idea to provide students in DC with individualized tutors. For me, this is personal. My father immigrated to the U.S. and worked seven days a week as a waiter in DC’s Chinatown in order to provide me with educational opportunities he never got. I can’t imagine how difficult it would’ve been for my family if the pandemic had hit while I was in elementary school.
It’s not just about learning how to read or learning how to solve algebraic equations. It’s also about having more time with another caring adult who is trained to notice where you may be falling behind, who recognizes how you’ve been improving, and who guides you to understand unfamiliar topics via examples that align with your personal interests.
High-dosage tutoring successfully addresses learning losses, as evidenced by multiple studies from Poverty Action Lab, Brookings Institution and Brown University. Previously completed tutoring interventions with Chicago Public Schools and Houston Public Schools have proved to “generate very large gains” for students.
If DC commits to tutoring, let’s do it right. We know it matters who provides the tutoring. It also matters where, when and how the tutoring is provided. A 2014 study of out-of-school time tutoring interventions found a wide range of outcomes. Some were transformative. Some were wasteful. The most successful programs have been supplemental and complementary to what teachers are doing in the classroom. They provide consistency by pairing students to work with the same tutor on an ongoing basis.
Providing such tutoring models can help our students get back on track- and beyond- where they would have been academically without COVID-19. It can also help address mental health and socioemotional challenges by providing students with an additional trusted mentor to help them through this tough time of exceptional isolation.
Recent polling commissioned by Education Reform Now DC found that 90% of DC parents support using emergency COVID-19 relief funds to implement tutoring services for public school students. There is a groundswell of momentum to provide students with extra support during this incredibly difficult time. Let’s not waste it. Please join me in calling for high-dosage tutoring for District students by contacting your DC Council member and expressing your support.
Read my op-ed via The DC Line