Several Northwest New Jersey school districts to receive funding for the implementation of High Impact Tutoring

Jay EdwardsMarch 20, 2024

569 3 minutes read

NEW JERSEY – The New Jersey Department of Education Tuesday announced $7 million in a second round of preliminary grant awards for the implementation of High Impact Tutoring in 57 additional school districts and charter schools.

The funding will help the schools establish highly effective, evidence-based strategies to promote learning acceleration among students.

High Impact Tutoring is designed to enable school districts and charter schools to work with educational service vendors, nonprofit organizations, and colleges and universities to provide tutoring services. The schools receiving the awards are also able to utilize existing staff for tutoring programs outside of regular classroom instruction.

The first round of High Impact Tutoring grants, announced in November, awarded $41 million to approximately 240 school districts and charter schools.

“These High Impact Tutoring grants give our schools access to a powerful tool that can accelerate learning for students throughout New Jersey,” said Kevin Dehmer, Acting Commissioner of Education. “Our efforts are focused on proven approaches that are designed to place students in the best position for academic growth. We know the need is there, and now we have the program in place to help address the need.”

Districts from the first round of the grant are already seeing meaningful improvements from this program. Franklin Township in Somerset County is implementing a multipronged approach, offering both virtual and in-person programming for students over the ten-month grant period. Eighty-six students with the greatest need began an intensive, twelve-week tutoring program as a result of the district’s grant award. At the close of the first tutoring cycle, Franklin’s students demonstrated increases in academic performance on a series of district assessments including 6 percent growth in English Language Arts and 13 percent growth in Math. The program is entering its second tutoring cycle, integrating in-person tutoring to augment the early success of the first round.

In Bergen County, Bergenfield Public School District used its grant award to implement 30 high-impact small tutoring groups, with each student group receiving 36 instructional tutoring sessions. After the first cycle, almost all students showed gains in both English Language Arts and Math, with many students closing learning gaps as large as one year’s growth.

The $7,075,627 in this second round of High Impact Tutoring grant awards is supported, in part, by federal American Rescue Plan funding outlined in the Fiscal Year 2024 budget. The grants focus on research-based approaches that have been proven to lead to substantial learning gains, including frequent and extended periods of tutoring with individuals or small groups of students; subject matter that is aligned to state learning standards; and customized, data-driven instruction based on students’ data, provided by highly qualified tutors who regularly collaborate with students’ teachers.

Preliminary grants have been awarded to the following districts: