BATON ROUGE — Students who may be struggling academically can get the intimate teaching they need to achieve grade-level learning with a program education officials highlighted Friday.
 
State Superintendent Cade Brumley and East Baton Rouge Parish School Board Superintendent LaMont Cole highlighted the new high-dosage tutoring initiative at Jefferson Terrace Academy, where the program was begin tested.

"We believe that if a kid needs a little extra help, we need to help them get that," Brumley said.

The high-dosage tutoring program was created with $30 million in funding from a law that went into effect in August requiring schools to provide embedded tutoring during the school day for certain kindergarten through fifth-grade students.

High-dosage tutoring is a way to accelerate learning for certain elementary students during the school day.

It takes place at least three times a week, lasts for approximately 30 minutes per session and consists of more intimate groups of no more than four students.

"To take something to scale like this statewide is hard, it's difficult so we're really trying to lean in and do this the right way,"  Brumley said.

Brumley says his department hopes to get the fourth-graders caught up on math and reading skills before they exit elementary school. 

Earlier in the week, Brumley announced the state has increased its standing on the National Assessment of Educational Progress' report card that measures fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading and math improvement.

Louisiana is ranked 32nd, improving 11 spots since 2022.

However, East Baton Rouge ranked in the middle of the state's public school districts.

"Until all of our students are able to perform at grade level and above we cannot be satisfied," Cole said.

Children lost valuable learning during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic when in-person schooling was canceled for more than a year. As a result, current fourth-graders who were in kindergarten during the pandemic are behind in reading and math. 

Cole believes this new tutoring initiative will help bring them up to the expected level.

"From the beginning of the year to even now we've seen an 11 point gain in terms of what our students are able to do and what they're able to accomplish. So we're going to continue to work and continue our efforts and hopefully, our kids will be at grade level and perform above," Cole said.

High-dosage tutoring is a way to accelerate learning for certain elementary students during the school day.

It takes place at least 3 times a week, lasts for approximately 30 minutes per session, and consists of groups of no more than 4 students.

"To take something to scale like this statewide is hard, it's difficult so we're really trying to lean in and do this the right way,"  Superintendent Brumley said.

Brumley says his department hopes to get the fourth-graders caught up on math and reading skills before they exit elementary school.