Tucson Unified School District administrators are arguing the case for keeping 100 specialists funded by COVID relief money off the chopping block, saying they’ve helped students the farthest behind after the pandemic.
The learning-recovery positions use $3.6 million of TUSD’s ESSER III federal COVID relief dollars. That round of funding brought a total of $172.9 million to the district. The funds must be spent by Sept. 30.
Where to find money to pay the specialists beyond that date is up in the air. At Tuesday’s TUSD Governing Board meeting, various possible sources were mentioned, including federal Title I funds and comprehensive school improvement grants.
The positions in question are 54 math and reading interventionists and 46 “response to intervention” professionals.
The interventionists design and plan individualized work with students, using data to identify who needs the extra help and to find the best techniques and materials for their needs. Response to intervention teachers, or RTIs, primarily work with grades 6-8 and are embedded within classes.
Data presented at Tuesday’s meeting, from a TUSD study, showed that overall, these experts in learning recovery were measurably effective in improving the academic performances of minimally proficient students, especially such students in grades 6-8.
They work with low-proficiency reading and math students in grades K-8 at 52 TUSD schools. They do not work with students beyond schools’ regular class times.
Students showing minimal math proficiency are often missing the fundamentals, TUSD Superintendent Gabriel Trujillo told the board.
“What a math interventionist does is get kids in small groups with very direct instruction with math facts, and then that bridges to math procedural knowledge,” Trujillo said. “Once the students have the math facts down, they can start on their conceptual knowledge, which is needed for multi-step equations” and other complex math processes.
By establishing knowledge on the basics, minimally proficient students, in theory, should boost their growth potential, he said.
The Arizona Department of Education requires reading interventionists to have a bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral accredited degree in K-8 reading and three years of full-time experience as a reading specialist or reading interventionist in grades K-8 in any state.
Learning recovery is one of the main tenets of federal COVID relief funding requirements. Indications are that recovery efforts at TUSD are working, Halley Freitas of TUSD’s evaluation and assessment department told the board.
The district’s exploratory analysis was based on the Arizona Academic Skills Assessment, which contributes to the state’s school letter grades. It considered grades 4-8 only, comparing results in the 52 schools with learning recovery professionals and the 20 without.
The analysis focused on academic growth of low-proficiency students in math and English-language arts, or ELA.
For students struggling the most, “It’s a big, deep hole, and it’s very hard for students to get out of that,” Freitas said. “The best way for them to get out of that is to show high growth, multiple years in a row.”
Overall data for grades 4-8 showed 29.15% of English-language arts students in schools with learning recovery professionals had high growth. In schools without interventionists or RTIs, 21.41% achieved high growth.
The study also showed minimally-proficient math students in schools with learning recovery professionals had higher growth. More than 33% of these students showed high growth, while more than 26% of minimally proficient students in schools without these professionals showed high growth.
“We recommend that this position be continued to be funded after ESSER funding runs out,” Freitas said.
Board member Ravi Shah said keeping the specialists on the roster is a good idea. “It’s going to make a big difference for our students for the next generation,” he said.
The Governing Board will vote Jan. 30 whether the 100 positions should be fully funded, independent of COVID relief funds.
