Illinois State University will be partnering with the Governor’s Office, the Illinois State Board of Education, the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Community College Board in coordination for the Illinois Tutoring Initiative.
Focused on learning renewal in response to COVID-19 impacts in schooling, this program will offer tutoring for roughly 8,500 students in Illinois within two years.
The initiative serves to focus on partnerships with local school districts that COVID-19 strongly impacted and have less funding and higher percentages of families and students with low-income.
“It allows us to bring a more intensive and research-based tutoring strategy to students across the entire state,” Dr. Christy Borders, director of the Illinois Tutoring Initiative and ISU professor of special education, said.
College students, including individuals in teacher education programs, retired teachers and community members, will serve as tutors in this initiative.
The Illinois Tutoring Initiative allows for a group of teachers who know each student best to be able to select students, curricula and material for the tutoring sessions and therefore schedule these sessions to provide consistency for each individual student.
“High-impact tutoring is an exciting avenue to support teachers across the state to supplement classroom instruction and work to build skills in students,” Borders said.
Students will participate individually or in small group tutoring sessions, which will take place for a minimum of three hours per week, for eight weeks to an entire semester.