Florida Tutoring Advantage is a statewide tutoring program established by legislation to enhance K-5 student literacy and mathematics proficiency through high-impact tutoring. Strong partnerships with districts are essential to ensuring effective implementation, aligning support with local needs and maximizing student success.
High-Impact Tutoring
High-impact tutoring (HIT) refers to personalized, consistent and intensive instructional support tailored to individual student learning needs. Based on the research from Stanford’s National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA), this approach has been proven to accelerate student achievement through frequent, small-group or one-on-one sessions aligned with classroom instruction.
Key elements of high-impact tutoring include:
Appropriate group sizes for tutoring sessions
Frequent sessions
Conducted by well-trained, engaging, and consistent tutors
Scheduled during the school day and includes collaboration with classroom teachers
Employs data-driven practices to guide instruction and continuous improvement
Emphasizes student-tutor relationship building to improve attendance outcomes
HIT is targeted to the specific student’s academic needs. Tutors use evidence-based curricula to design personally meaningful sessions, enhancing the relevance and effectiveness of learning. Tutors provide focused and consistent sessions, whether one-on-one or in small groups, ensuring students receive dedicated attention and thorough exploration of the subject matter. It is markedly different from traditional methods of tutoring, with key differences outlined below:
High-Impact Tutoring IS
With a consistent tutor
Relationship-focused
Focused on acceleration
Regularly scheduled sessions during the school day
Accessible to all eligible students
Data-informed for instruction
High-Impact Tutoring IS NOT
With a different tutor each time
Question-resolution focused
Focused on remediation
Scheduled as needed
Homework help
Reliant on family members for transportation or payment
How Florida Tutoring Advantage Works
The Lastinger Center will host informational sessions and reach out to districts to gauge their interest in participating in the Florida Tutoring Advantage.
The districts will then be asked to fill out an Interest Form to determine the total interest for the statewide program.
Based on a combination of factors, including available funding, district interest, student performance data, student need and district commitment to supporting the program’s goals, Florida Tutoring Advantage will then match services to interested districts to maximize student impact.
Awarded districts will then be contacted by Florida Tutoring Advantage staff to work through the next steps of setting up their particular service.
Program services include:
District Provided In-Person Tutoring
Florida Tutoring Advantage partners with select districts who demonstrate the desire to build a program to be self administered. FTA may provide funding for technology, staffing and services to support a high impact tutoring program.
Partner Provided Virtual Tutoring
Florida Tutoring Advantage contracts with a variety of tutoring partners who provide virtual tutoring services in reading and mathematics to K-5 students.
Partner Provided In-Person Tutoring
Florida Tutoring Advantage contracts with a variety of tutoring partners who provide in-person tutoring services in reading and mathematics to K-5 students.
Partner Provided Automated Learning Support Software
Florida Tutoring Advantage contracts with a variety of automated tutoring partners to provide software licenses to support reading and mathematics to K-5 students.
Partner Provided AI Enhanced Learning Support
Florida Tutoring Advantage contracts with an AI platform to provide access to their platform for 6-12 students.
District-provided in-person tutoring
Florida Tutoring Advantage partner with select Districts who demonstrate the desire to build a program to be self administered. Florida Tutoring Advantage may provide funding for technology, staffing, and services to support a high impact tutoring program.
Partner provided in-person tutoring
Florida Tutoring Advantage contracts with a variety of tutoring partners who provide in-person tutoring services in reading and mathematics to K-5 students.
Partner-provided, virtual-instructor-led tutoring
Florida Tutoring Advantage contracts with a variety of tutoring partners who provide virtual tutoring services in reading and mathematics to K-5 students.
Partner-provided automated learning support software
Florida Tutoring Advantage contracts with a variety of automated software partners to provide software licenses for software to support reading and mathematics to K-5 students.
Partner-provided virtual-instructor-led tutoring
Florida Tutoring Advantage contracts with an AI platform to provide access to their platform for 6-12 students.
What happens after District-Partner Matching?
After districts have shared their interest in services and Florida Tutoring Advantage has matched them with tutoring partner(s), Districts will need to:
Comply with the Guidelines to Participate.
Complete the Florida Tutoring Advantage Tutor Services Agreement (MOA).
Complete a Comprehensive Data Sharing Agreement (DSA), if one does not exist already.
Meet with Tutoring Service Partner or with the Lastinger Center if implementing a District Program on a regular basis.
Regularly report data to the Florida Tutoring Advantage program through an authorized data partner.
Participating districts will provide directory data to our tutoring partners to develop rosters for tutoring sessions. Data from all our partners will be transferred to our Tutoring Management System to clean and standardize all the data into a single dataset. With the use of FLDOE data, the Florida Tutoring Advantage will track student progress and the impact of our program.
District Information Session
The Florida Tutoring Advantage team met with school district leaders across the state to share how Florida Tutoring Advantage can support the development and implementation of high-impact tutoring in reading and mathematics. Informational sessions were designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the Florida Tutoring Advantage program—including research on high-impact tutoring, service options, district roles and responsibilities and how outcomes-based contracting (OBC) can drive lasting impact. Participants also engaged in a data-focused discussion, reviewed critical implementation dates and had an opportunity for open Q&A. Through these sessions, we aimed to strengthen partnerships with districts and ensure programming aligns with district needs to improve student outcomes through evidence-based, high-impact tutoring.
