High-impact tutoring is one of the most widely endorsed strategies for accelerating student learning and addressing long-standing opportunity gaps. The research is strong. The investments are growing. And yet, too many tutoring initiatives fall short of their promise.
The gap isn’t evidence. It’s leadership.
Specifically, it’s the absence of families most impacted by inequitable access at the table where tutoring policy and implementation is shaped.
Education policy is often designed with good intentions and strong data, but without the insight of parents and caregivers who navigate school systems every day. When families are engaged only as recipients of services, or consulted after decisions are made, tutoring initiatives risk being misaligned with real needs. At Innovate, we know that family leadership changes that dynamic. It brings urgency, accountability, and lived experience into policy conversations that might otherwise remain abstract.
That belief is the bedrock of our work to empower more parents to become effective advocates for high-quality education solutions like tutoring. Last month, we worked with long-time partner National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) at Stanford University to conduct a training session with NSSA’s Family and Caregiver Tutoring Advisory Council (FACT).
FACT is composed of parent and caregiver leaders who are helping shape the future of high-impact tutoring across communities. FACT members are preparing to meet directly with elected officials and school and district leaders to advocate for expanded access to high-impact tutoring. Central to this work was training on research action meetings, which are structured, purpose-driven conversations that connect evidence with clear policy asks.
The Innovate training focused on Research Meeting Action System (RMAS), a five-part framework that enables families to:
- Identify the decision-makers who influence tutoring policy
- Lead research-informed meetings with confidence and clarity
- Document commitments made in those conversations
- Secure concrete follow-up actions
- Track progress and accountability over time
This approach shifts family engagement from one-off input opportunities to sustained influence.
As tutoring continues to receive significant attention and funding at the local, state, and federal levels, the field faces an important choice: We can continue to scale tutoring through top-down decisions that prioritize speed over alignment. Or we can invest in the leadership of families to ensure that policies reflect both what the research says and what families know to be true.