CASE STUDIES

Building Systems That Last: How Peabody Public Schools Scaled High-Impact Tutoring

Since 2022, Peabody Public Schools has partnered with Springboard to scale high-impact tutoring and multilingual family engagement districtwide.

District Overview

Location

Peabody, MA

District Enrollment:

5,774 Pre-K–12 students

Springboard Program Enrollment

1,463 students served since 2022 across 37 schools in the district

District Demographics:

63.5% White

25.8% Hispanic/Latino

6.2% African American

2.2% Asian & Pacific Islander

2.8% Multiracial

0.3% American Indian

29.7% Low Income

36.9% Multilingual Learners 06.7% Students with Disabilities

Overview

Peabody Public Schools is a medium-sized district with a multilingual student population, including families who speak Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. In 2022, facing shifting funding streams and limited internal capacity, the district needed a way to deliver consistent literacy support across schools without adding strain to staff. They approached literacy as both an academic priority and a systemwide commitment.

District leaders faced the challenge of scaling high-impact tutoring across schools without the staffing or infrastructure to manage it internally. Rather than adopt piecemeal solutions, Peabody partnered with Springboard Collaborative to implement a fully managed, districtwide model, one built to adapt to varying school contexts while maintaining instructional coherence. The result is an approach that accelerates student learning, builds staff capacity, and embeds family engagement as part of the instructional system rather than as a separate initiative.

Challenges

Closing Post-COVID Gaps Through Acceleration

In 2021, gaps were visible across grade levels following COVID-19 disruptions. District leaders wanted to accelerate learning and help students reach grade level, rather than revisit material students had already struggled with, pointing to the need for a high-dosage, small-group tutoring model.

A Scheduling Challenge That Demanded Flexibility

Peabody's elementary school day ends around 3:00 p.m., and after-school hours were already filled with activities and family schedules. Adding more to that window was not realistic, which led the district toward a before-school model instead.

Limited Capacity for Implementation at Scale

As a medium-sized district, Peabody did not have the internal team to recruit, train, manage, and sustain a high-dosage tutoring program across multiple sites. The district needed a partner to operationalize staffing, logistics, and day-to-day program management without adding strain to a central office already running lean.

Inconsistent Family Engagement Across Diverse Communities

Peabody is a gateway city with a multilingual population. Families wanted to support their children's reading growth, but differences in home language, access, and prior school experiences created barriers to consistent engagement, particularly for multilingual and newcomer families.

Solution

High-Impact Tutoring Designed Around the Community

pringboard built a high-dosage, small-group tutoring model grounded in the science of reading, delivered before school to fit the rhythm of the Peabody community. The structure gave working families a reliable before-school option and gave students added time to build literacy skills, with access to breakfast and a calmer start to the day.

Turnkey Implementation

Springboard managed recruitment, hiring, onboarding, payroll, and day-to-day program logistics across sites, relieving the district of administrative work its central office could not absorb. The model also adapted to Peabody's existing context, including satellite classrooms and shared program leaders across sites, so no school was excluded due to size.

Instructional Coherence Across the Ecosystem

Using a push-in model rather than pulling students out, reading teachers stayed connected to classroom instruction, and Family Workshops were tied directly to classroom content. Virtual professional learning communities connected educators across sites around shared instructional routines.

Multilingual Family Engagement

Family Workshops gave all families, including multilingual families, tools for supporting reading at home, with Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole interpretation and translation support, and staff hired for their language skills.

Results

Peabody’s partnership with Springboard produced measurable academic growth while strengthening the systems surrounding students: family engagement, instructional coherence, and staff leadership capacity.

4.3

Months literacy growth in 8-10 weeks

86%

Average Family Workshop by Multilingual Families

68%

Student met or exceeded growth goals

“From the beginning, Springboard served as an important thought partner in the work. They helped us problem-solve and think through the elements of start-up. They had the technical aspects of getting people onboarded quickly and efficiently, and they had training that was ready to go. Having these pieces in place kept us from getting bogged down and allowed us to maximize our time providing services to students.”

Dr. Kelly Chase
Assistant Superintendent | Peabody Public Schools

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