Reciprocity of Accountability

$880.

At the end of the first quarter, each of Reach's twenty-two tutors will be eligible for a bonus of up to $40 based on grades in academic courses. The bonus, worth ten times their GPA on a 4.0 scale, is meant to motivate the students to make every effort to improve in-school performance. Even greater rewards are available for improvement from quarter to quarter.

Today, I wrote $880 on the white board. I asked the tutors to imagine that money sitting on a table. Then, I told them, at the current rate, they're leaving about half of it sitting there.

Many of our tutors have had previous academic struggles, so their middling grades are not entirely surprising. As we were confronted with their first progress report, however, I was reminded of one of Professor Richard Elmore's rules:

For every increment of performance I demand from you, I have an equal responsibility to provide you with the capacity to meet that expectation.

Many of our tutors' teachers have started asking them to come in for additional help after school; however, the tutors' obligation to Reach prevents this extra help from happening. Additionally, the subject-specific extra help simply addresses the symptom (poor grades), not the root cause (limited reading skills). Though, if we're encouraging our tutors to improve their grades, then we must provide them with the capacity to make those improvements.

For that reason, our days just got a little longer. Reach will begin offering an additional hour-long study hall following training sessions on Mondays and Wednesdays. Through offering this additional layer of support, we hope to help our students achieve success both in and after school by providing time to address both the symptoms and the root cause. Starting on Wednesday, we will make this additional support available. We hope that its impact will be felt by the October 29th end of the quarter.

As a new nonprofit organization, we continue to learn how to best support our tutors both in and after school. We hope this slight change to our approach will make a difference for our kids.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

Mark