Summit Academy Akron Elementary School’s high-impact tutoring program continues to capture the attention of K-12 education administrators. On October 29, Principal Dawn Presley and Instructional Coordinator Lindsey Durbin joined Meridith Banks, Senior Director of the school’s tutoring provider Amplify, to present at the Ohio Association of Administrators of State and Federal Education fall conference in Columbus.
During their presentation, “Discovering the Impact of Amplify Tutoring on Reading Performance,” the speakers explained that 43 percent of students who participated in six or more weeks of high-dosage tutoring experienced above to well-above growth. They also noted that the sessions sparked positive responses from both teachers and their students.
“Last year, I had a student who was a struggling reader and lacked confidence in reading. Through tutoring I watched his reading fluency grow along with his confidence in reading,” says second grade teacher Jennifer Langos. She adds that her students quickly mastered the computer skills necessary to navigate through their tutoring sessions, with little assistance.
Fourth-grade student Kashmere shared how the tutoring helped her last school year in reading, math and in sounding out words. When told she would continue the program this school year she responded with a smile and an enthusiastic “Yay.”
Currently, 32 Akron Elementary students, divided into eight groups of four children each, receive tutoring Monday, Tuesday and Thursday mornings. An Amplify tutor leads the 30-minute sessions virtually, in real time. Simultaneously, Instructional Assistant Cathy Osborne supervises the sessions, monitors participation, and helps students log on and traverse their computer screens.
Last April, the successful program piqued the interest of FutureEd’s Liz Cohen who visited Summit Academy Akron Elementary School to get a firsthand look at its tutoring program. Cohen, who is the policy director for Georgetown University think tank FutureEd, identified Summit Academy as the first special education-focused school she visited. Cohen and her team traveled to K-12 schools across the country to examine the common threads in successful tutoring programs centered on new literacy curriculum.
Now in the process of penning a book, Cohen reached out to Presley for permission to include Summit Academy Akron Elementary School’s tutoring results data as well as commentary from Presley on the program’s impact, in her upcoming release.