Extra help doesn't help if it's 'incoherent'

Students who fall behind usually stay behind, reports a 2024 TNTP analysis. Schools provide intensive "interventions" for low achievers, but it doesn't help -- and may make things worse. In a 2023 study in four Tennessee districts, very low achievers "made less growth than similarly performing students who received no intervention at all."

How could that be? Interventions and core instruction are often incoherent, writes Natalie Wexler. She provides hypotheticals from two recent reports on “instructional coherence,” from TNTP and from CCSSO (Council of Chief State School Officers). Both reports feature a girl named "Ana" who reads well below grade level.

TNTP's Ana, a fifth-grader, is reading The Phantom Tollbooth in class. One intervention gives her computer-generated text written below grade-level. It's about endangered species. In addition, a tutor has her practice “sight words” from an online list with no connection to The Phantom Tollbooth or to endangered species. Another intervention for students who aren't native speakers of English has Ana practicing the skill of determining cause and effect, using an article on the water cycle.

CCSSO offers a coherent example for a fourth-grade Ana, whose class is reading about how blood circulates for an antomy unit. Before class, in a tutoring session, she reads an easier text on red blood cells that builds her knowledge and vocabulary. During class, a co-teacher leads Ana and others in a small group that reviews words that start with circ, such as circulation, circle and circumference, to help students understand it’s a word root having to do with things that are round or go around.

TNTP Ana "gets a jumble of 'supports' covering random topics," writes Wexler, while CCSSO Ana "gets a series of coordinated activities to help her understand the specific text she’s expected to read in class."

Most students get the mishmash of "help" that's not very helpful, she writes. “A typical school day for a low-performing student may include exposure to multiple curricula, conflicting instructional routines, and disconnected goals,” the TNTP report says. It's overwhelming.

Both reports call for "aligning the extra support provided to struggling students with the core curriculum," writes Wexler. But that's only going to work if the core curriculum is “high quality” in all respects, she warns. Everyone now claims their curriculum is high quality. Often, it's not.

Schools have invested heavily in screening tools to identify which students are falling behind, writes Michele Caracappa. But the screeners rarely explain why students are struggling. Students are grouped by their scores, not by a diagnosis of their learning needs.

TNTP's case study of Knox County Schools (KCS) shows how pairing screeners with diagnostic assessments helped educators redesign tutoring to be more effective.

High-dosage tutoring in small groups helped students improve, reports TNTP. In a Tennessee school, students spend 30 minutes three times a week "with a certified educator taking turns reading aloud, responding to questions, practicing tricky spellings, and receiving feedback from the teacher — all grounded in the same materials they are expected to master from their core literacy block." Students with greater needs were assigned to work for 45 minutes every day on computer programs that do not relate to their core literacy class.