Stopping the ‘COVID Slide’
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The prompt for this round of the FEDforum is: What is the issue most important to your organization? This week, hear from the Federal Employee Education & Assistance Fund (FEEA).
As we dig into 2021, a recurring issue FEEA sees among federal employees who are parents is concern about kids and school. Whether they’re navigating fully remote learning, hybrid in-person/remote options, or fully in-person schooling, kids and parents are finding this school year challenging and kids may be falling behind in various subjects.
Like the better known “summer slide”, when students lose some of what they learned during the academic year while away from school for the summer, “COVID slide” is affecting students’ ability to learn, retain, and progress during the pandemic. Kids who might normally ask a quick question after class or stay after school to get extra help from a teacher lack those options during this disrupted school year. Others have a hard time concentrating during online lessons and therefore miss instruction. The solution? One-on-one tutoring.
A recent Brookings Institution article found that “tutoring is remarkably effective at helping students learn, with over 80% of the 96 included studies reporting statistically significant effects…In other words, with the help of tutoring, a student at the 50th percentile would improve to the 66th percentile. In the field of K-12 education research where there is little agreement on what works, these findings are remarkable not only for their magnitude but also for their consistency. The evidence is clear that tutoring can reliably help students catch up.”
But in-person tutoring isn’t a safe option in many places right now, and the cost can quickly rise beyond what many federal families can afford. So FEEA, with support from the Federal Long Term Care Insurance Program (FLTCIP) and Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBS), formed a partnership with Tutor.com (part of the Princeton Review), which has been providing online tutoring for more than 20 years. Federal employees with salaries under $100,000/year can sign-up with FEEA to get access to free, online, on-demand tutoring for their K-12 children. Sessions are available 24 hours/day, almost every day of the year, in a wide variety of subjects. Parent coaching is also available, as well as some test prep.
Since we launched the program on November 1, 2020, more than 4,500 families with over 8,000 children have signed up and nearly 3,000 tutoring sessions have been used so far. FEEA is committed to offering this program at least through the end of the current academic year (June 30, 2021) and there is no limit on the number of sessions a student or family may use. We want to do what we can to help kids succeed during this stressful year and let parents focus on other needs of their families and federal jobs.
You can find all the program details, including a registration link, at feea.org/tutoring. We recommend signing up right away as it can take a few business days for your login to be processed and made active and we want you to be ready for that Sunday afternoon “My project is due tomorrow and I need help” request or the 9pm on a weeknight “I have a test tomorrow and don’t understand X” panic. Register today and help will be available when it’s needed.
And even if you don’t have kids, don’t need the program, or don’t qualify, we bet you know someone who could benefit. Please help FEEA help feds by sharing this information with friends and colleagues. You could make a big difference for a federal family.
This column from the Federal Employee Education & Assistance Fund (FEEA) is part of the FEDforum, an initiative to unite voices across the federal community. The FEDforum is a space for federal employee groups to share their organizations’ initiatives and activities with the FEDagent audience.
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