Pearl Convenes Inaugural Community Tutoring Partnerships Summit Attended by State, University and District Leaders Across 18 States

Participants curated best practices that underscore the importance of diversifying tutor supply, establishing training and professional development pathways, and using evidence to validate programs

RICHMOND, Va., April 12, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Pearl, the leading research-based tutor management platform, announced today insights from its inaugural Community Tutoring Partnerships Summit focused on the rise of community tutoring partnerships. Community tutoring partnerships bring together states, districts and higher education institutions to leverage existing community resources with the goal of developing sustainable tutoring programs designed to solve each community's greatest needs.

The first-of-its-kind day-long virtual summit was attended by leaders spanning 18 states and 39 higher education institutions serving hundreds of districts nationwide.  The event highlighted evidence-based strategies and lessons from the nation's leading community-tutoring experts including Dr. Christy Borders E.d.D, Director of the Illinois Tutoring Initiative at Illinois State University, Faith Freeman P.h.D, Co-Director of Institute for Partnerships in Education at University North Carolina Greensboro, Susanna Loeb P.h.D, Director of the Annenberg Institute of School Reform at Brown University, and Patrick Steck, Senior Director of Policy for Deans for Impact.

"Community-designed partnerships as a segment are showing significant promise in the fight against learning loss," said John Failla, CEO and co-founder of Pearl. "These partnerships enable local school systems to build sustainable innovation right into their model. The result is a meaningful, measurable impact to lead to academic outcomes."

During the summit, the National Student Support Accelerator also launched its inaugural Higher Education Toolkit, a playbook aimed to support Higher Education Institutions in partnering with school districts to offer high-impact tutoring services. The biggest takeaway from the convening was a unanimous consensus among key stakeholders that understanding how to retain, recruit, manage and support tutors is the most pressing issue to ensure tutoring is sustainable and effective in driving student outcomes.

With the Biden administration calling for an additional 250,000 tutors and mentors to help students make up for lost instruction time due to the pandemic, tutoring has emerged as an essential component of K-12 education. Researchers, across multiple studies, find that high-impact tutoring can dramatically accelerate student achievement.

However, creating an evidence-based tutoring program can be daunting, especially during unprecedented education staffing shortages and uncertainty on resources post ARP-ESSER funding. Schools and districts have significant questions about recruiting, training and coaching tutors, choosing the most efficacious compensation model and how to ensure sustained funding in the future, and how to structure and measure the performance of a wide variety of critical interventions.

Having partnered with multiple state, university and district-led community-tutoring programs since 2020, Pearl is developing the nation's most diverse dataset in the tutoring industry. The platform is foundational for managing and scaling hybrid tutoring through evidence-based best practices in collaboration with the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and its National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) to safely gather data to continuously improve program design and measurably accelerate student outcomes. In March, Pearl announced that it had joined the innovative community-based tutoring program endorsed by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin in partnership with the Urban Leagues of Hampton Roads and Greater Richmond and four historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

Failla concludes, "Certain geographies and specialties are in deeper need today, and they're seeking guidance and evidence to stand as clear examples for how to build high-impact tutoring programs based on efficacy. These best practices curated by our participants at state and district levels can serve as that north star."

To read more about the ten key takeaways from the Community Tutoring Partner Summit, visit https://tutorwithpearl.com/pearl-community-tutoring-partnership-summit-2023-2/ 

About Pearl

Based in Richmond, VA, Pearl is the leading research-based tutor management platform that streamlines operations, reports actionable data, and improves outcomes for districts, state agencies and organizations tutoring tomorrow's workforce, today. The platform's fully integrated classroom and administrative tools allow its partners to launch, scale and sustain evidence-based tutoring to support measurable outcomes for all communities. The Pearl ecosystem provides access to the nation's largest and most respected industry partners including the Annenberg Institute at Brown University and the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University.  For more information visit TutorwithPearl.com.

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