Contracting relationships between public school districts and vendors are a common feature of education provision in the United States. Contracted services in schools can range from broad, essential functions such as school meals, bussing, and janitorial services to more specialized services such as the analysis of student data, curriculum mapping, and professional development for staff members. The strength of these contracting relationships depends on vendors providing consistent services and on payment between vendors and districts. Providers are paid with public funds, and communities may expect clear oversight of contracts and transparency about their effects on valued outcomes. Transparency also can help districts make decisions about whether or not to continue contracts with providers.
Tutor
Join this invitation-only gathering of researchers, district, state, and higher education leaders, tutoring providers, and funders to:
- Learn about implications of recent research findings and innovative and sustainable practices in tutoring;
- Explore successful state and district strategies for scaling and sustainability; and
- Make connections with education leaders in the field.
Oakland REACH and district staff trained tutors based on the National Student Support Accelerator’s high-impact tutoring program, which requires weekly small-group support, close monitoring of student progress, alignment with district curriculum and oversight by school staff.
In early 2024, initial reports indicated that tutoring might not only help kids catch up academically after the pandemic but could also combat chronic absenteeism. More recent research, however, suggests that prediction may have been overly optimistic.
Stanford University researchers have been studying Washington, D.C.’s $33 million investment in tutoring, which provided extra help to more than 5,000 of the district’s 100,000 students in 2022-23, the second year of a three-year tutoring initiative. When researchers looked at these students’ test scores, they found minimal to modest improvements in reading or math.
“We weren’t seeing a ton of big impacts on achievement,” said Monica Lee, one of the Stanford researchers. “But what we were seeing at that point in time were promising findings that the tutoring might be doing something for attendance.”
Susanna Loeb, executive director of the National Student Support Accelerator, explained that the growth in spending on private tutoring is largely driven by wealthy families. This has contributed to wider educational gaps between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Loeb wrote that high-impact in-class tutoring is the most accessible and effective option. She added that it works best when it’s embedded in schools during the day, where a consistent tutoring session takes place for at least 30 minutes at a time and at a minimum of three days a week.
“The most effective way for parents to get free tutoring for their children is through their school,” Loeb wrote. “Students who attend tutoring as part of their regular school education either during or immediately before or after school are shown to have higher attendance rates, which leads to better outcomes, such as stronger math and reading achievement.”
Today, Mayor Muriel Bowser and the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) announced a new round of grant and contract awards totaling more than $7 million to fund high-impact tutoring (HIT) programs for over 6,000 students across 90 DC Public Schools and public charter schools during the 2024-25 school year. This strategic investment includes $4.3 million in grants to 16 DC local education agencies (LEAs) and over $3 million in contracts with 11 qualified HIT providers and one strategic supports partner.
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North Carolina Education Corps (NCEC) is a nonprofit working to accelerate student learning and strengthen communities by empowering caring adults to support students in data-informed ways. Currently, we are partnered with public school units across North Carolina to recruit caring adults form diverse backgrounds to become high-impact tutors employed by the public school unit. NCEC provides initial training, aligned with the science of reading and tutoring best practices. Our team of learning coaches extend that professional development through ongoing coaching support.
ClassUp provides premium online, 1:1 tutoring to students at all levels of learning and every demographic. Every student deserves the very best tutoring from the very best teaching professionals. Our tutors are US-based teaching professionals with degrees from top universities and a minimum of five years of teaching experience.
Each student receives a personalized learning plan customized by their ClassUp teacher meeting each student's individual learning goals, style, pace, interests and local school curriculum and standards.
Our program provides personalized, high-quality instruction to cohorts of 5-15 students, supported by two dedicated instructors. This approach ensures individualized attention, fosters collaborative learning, and promotes academic success in a supportive and inclusive environment. We serve students in middle school and high school for Mathematics, and we place a strong emphasis on helping students pass the New York State Algebra I exam, which are currently required for graduation in NYS.
Beyond Basics provides one-on-one, phonics-based literacy tutoring. We work with school staff to identify which students are in need of intervention. We then administer a diagnostic assessment that indicates where the student struggles with reading. They are then paired with a tutor who will work with them individually for the duration of the program. Our assessments allow the tutor to create personalized lesson plans geared toward the child's unique learning needs. The student and tutor meet five days per week, for an hour each day during school hours.
Edmentum’s award-winning K–12 virtual tutoring closes learning gaps and propels academic growth with program flexibility to target and support unique student needs. Our proven tutoring program is outlined in a research-based approach, enhancing learning outcomes and retention. Edmentum’s virtual tutoring supports the following outcomes:
• Provide vetted, qualified tutoring without straining campus resources
• Amplify academic and intervention programs with wraparound support
• Help more students reach academic milestones and achieve test success
Tutoring programs exploded in the last five years as states and school districts searched for ways to counter plummeting achievement during COVID. But the cost of providing supplemental instruction to tens of millions of students can be eye-watering, even as the results seem to taper off as programs serve more students.
That’s where artificial intelligence could prove a decisive advantage. A report circulated in October by the National Student Support Accelerator found that an AI-powered tutoring assistant significantly improved the performance of hundreds of tutors by prompting them with new ways to explain concepts to students. With the help of the tool, dubbed Tutor CoPilot, students assigned to the weakest tutors began posting academic results nearly equal to those assigned to the strongest. And the cost to run the program was just $20 per pupil.
The paper suggests that tutoring initiatives may successfully adapt to the challenges of cost and scale. Another hopeful piece of evidence appeared this spring, when Stanford University researchers found that a “small burst” program in Florida produced meaningful literacy gains for young learners through micro-interactions lasting just 5–7 minutes at a time. If the success of such models can be replicated, there’s a chance that the benefits of tutoring could be enjoyed by millions more students.
Student absenteeism, which skyrocketed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, has negative consequences for student engagement and achievement. This study examines the impact of the High-Impact Tutoring (HIT) Initiative, implemented by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education in Washington DC, on reducing absenteeism. The HIT initiative was designed to mitigate learning loss by providing additional academic supports with a focus on students affected by the pandemic’s disruptions.
In the past five years, the Texas district’s investments in staffing and high dosage tutoring are paying off.
That’s why the district piloted a virtual tutoring program in the 2020-21 school year. Middle school students were the first to participate. In spring 2021, the live virtual tutoring program expanded to serve 6,000 students in K-12, he said.
That same spring, Ector County ISD designated $10 million of its $93 million in federal pandemic relief funds to tutoring over the next three years, according to a report by university-based research nonprofits FutureEd and the National Student Support Accelerator.
“It’s much more than just the dosage that makes the difference in this type of tutoring,” said Kathy Bendheim, the director of strategic advising for the National Student Support Accelerator, which studies tutoring models. “You do it with a consistent tutor, and it’s not homework help—it’s intentional instruction based on data about where that student is on their academic journey and what their specific instructional needs are.”
At the Critical Thinking Child (CTC), we provide tutoring and educational consulting for students, parents, and partners seeking to support children and young people in navigating academic success within our modern era of technology. We prepare students to engage in learning and think critically and deeply about our evolving world.
NOW! ProgramsⓇ is a provider of online, evidence-based literacy instruction designed to meet the diverse needs of K-12 students. For over a decade, we have delivered 1:1 and small-group instruction through our proprietary program, NOW! Foundations for Speech, Language, Reading, and SpellingⓇ, which is grounded in research funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). This research was rigorously vetted and ranks in the top 3% of the nation’s proposals for its proven impact on literacy development.
High-impact tutoring has the strongest evidence base of any approach for improving student learning, and contributes to increased engagement and attendance. As far as proven education solutions go, it’s a pretty darn good one, and has rightfully been a bipartisan priority since the pandemic.
But federal pandemic relief money that helped fuel the expansion of such programs dried up in September, and recent research has sparked debates about the high-impact tutoring’s effectiveness when implemented at scale. This includes an evaluation of Metro Nashville Public Schools’ tutoring program that reported small gains for students and a meta-analysis of large high-impact tutoring programs that showed challenges in maintaining evidence-based practices.
An AI-powered tutoring assistant increased human tutors’ capacity to help students through math problems and improved students’ performance in math, according to a Stanford University study.
The digital tool, Tutor CoPilot, was created by Stanford researchers to guide tutors, especially novices, in their interactions with students.
The study is the first randomized controlled trial to examine a human-AI partnership in live tutoring, according to the researchers. The study examines whether the tool is effective for improving tutors’ skills and students’ math learning.
Proximity Learning has customizable tutoring options utilizing our Livestreamed (synchronous) certified teachers across all CORE subject areas and grade levels. Each learner will have the same tutor throughout the duration of the program. Tutors are intentionally trained on how to facilitate effective small group tutoring sessions, develop meaningful relationships with their learners, and progress monitor the academic growth per child.