Tutoring Program Assessment

Jeremy is a 10 year old student. He's doing well in most of his classes, with a B average or higher, but he's struggling in math. He is the child of a singer father, and that father works overtime at his job, so most of his time after class is spent with his non-English speaking grandmother, who is of little help when it comes to explaining math problems.

He needs a better after school care program. You have developed a tutoring program that students can take advantage of. Jeremy's father immediately enrolls his child in the program, in an effort to improve his grades and give him a safe place to go.

It's a match that is great for both Jeremy and his father. But then what? How do you find out that the program you initiated is worthwhile? How do you know that it meets the needs of students like Jeremy and that it is having the desired outcome? Chances are that creating a program to match those needs will help, but why leave that up to chance? What can you do to improve the success of the programs you create for your students?

To address the needs of students like Jeremy, you need to have tools that you use to evaluate the success of your programs. You need to understand all of its facets and carefully track the program over time to see whether or not it's helping students get their desired results. Here is a short list of some of the recommendations that you should consider for your program: Create Performance Metrics and Goals First and foremost, you need to make sure that you have something to measure.

There's no way to know that your program is successfully helping these students meet their goals without some type of measurement tools in place to judge these outcomes. Grades are going to be an important tool, of course, and should be tracked over time as well.

But other factors like confidence, support, etc., are all important for any student and can be tracked through various surveys and measurement tools. Examining Factors and Needs It's also important to figure out what needs to be addressed in the programs themselves. There's math.

There's science. There's English. There are also issues with confidence, test taking ability, homework completion, focus, studying strategies and more.

What is your program addressing? Is it addressing what these students need? Once you've determined these factors, you can follow them up with more performance metrics and goals, and ensure that your programs are giving assistance to the students that need them most.

Examine the Work of Others There's nothing unethical about modeling your programs after what others have done before you. Your goal as an educational institution is not to try to start from scratch with everything you initiate in your organization. You can accomplish a great deal simply by seeing the work of others that has had success in the past, and making sure that your program uses the same effective principles.

Of course, you should still research these changes and make sure that they're actually working for your school. Many programs that work in some communities don't work in others, and it's important to make sure that your programs meet the needs of your school. Parental Involvement Whether it's through the PTA or through parent surveys, parents will have insight into not only what their children need, but also what they need.

In the example of Jeremy above, the father was not around and no one was able to help with math. These are issues that may not be known outside of the classroom unless they're reflected in grades, and even if they are, the cause of those grades may not be clear without further study. Goal Setting You will also want to make sure that you've set goals for the program.

Once you know the needs of the students and you have measurements in place, make sure that you've set out realistic but valuable goals for the organization. You need to see improvements, and you need to make sure that these improvements are better than marginal unless marginal improvements create a significant difference.

You have two options when it comes to developing a program. You can start by creating a program and crafting it to meet the needs of the students based on your analytics, or you can take the approach that many businesses use and start from scratch, without preconceived ideas as to what people need. Part of this has to do with what's already in place and what research you've completed about other programs.

For example, if you've already crafted a program that has been in place for years and it was modeled after a successful program at a complementary school, it may not be in your best interests to dismantle the program and start from scratch. On the other hand, you may not have any programs in place, or those that you do have may not be working. Developing a program through focus groups, surveys, and community input may be far more beneficial.

Focus groups can help you develop a framework for your research, while your surveys can provide you with an opportunity to research without the mess of focus group data. You can then develop a program that meets those needs directly.

You also need to get input from students as best as possible. Depending on the age group, there may be limits to what your school can ask and how honest you expect the answers to be, but that doesn't mean some form of data collection isn't valuable. Tracking student progress also has to do with personality, opinions, and other factors that go into education, and the only way you can know that with any certainty is to find a way to survey students within these programs.

Finally, don't forget to get input from your staff as well. Both teachers that work during the day and those that work in the after school care program. Their input can be invaluable for understanding what children need, and also what they need to ensure they're giving proper help to the children.

You can also use these data to better promote the programs and improve student and parent involvement. Often each group sees the program in a different light: Teachers see the program as an asset to the child's experience. Children see the program as something keeping them from TV.

Parents barely see what's happening in the program at all or its outcomes and see it as a way to make sure the child isn't getting into any trouble. This is obviously a gross over-simplification, but we're using it to illustrate an important problem that may occur with both the planning and initiation of these programs. Each group is going to see the program differently, and – because these programs affect each group differently – they're likely to have little idea what others are seeing.

That's where you can also consider keeping both parents and teachers informed via online reporting. Publish the results of your research online and allow parents and staff to view data about the program to keep people interested, while helping them understand what the other group(s) is seeing from the programs.

Parents, teachers, and to a lesser extent students all understand how important these extra-curricular programs are for education. But simply creating the program is not enough if you want to be the best school in your district. You need to focus on metrics and needs for every age group, making sure that each and every program you use is dedicated specifically towards helping students succeed.

The best way to do this is to research these programs thoroughly. Creating metrics, examining variables, discussing goals – all of these activities will set your school up for greater success than the schools that don't, and will ensure that the children enrolled in your school are getting a better education with your after school programs.