Of all academic interventions, so-called “high-dosage” tutoring has shown the most evidence of helping students gain academic ground quickly.
Susanna Loeb, the founder and executive director of the National Student Support Accelerator, studies how schools can use and scale up intensive tutoring, which involves one-on-one situations or very small groups meeting at least 30 minutes, three or more times a week.
Loeb, who is also a professor and the director of the education policy initiative at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, spoke with Education Week about what goes into effective tutoring.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What makes tutoring effective?
I do think it is really the one-on-one, one-on-two kind of small-group instruction that’s well targeted to what the student needs, that’s relationship-based so that there is trust, and a willingness by the student to take risks and really try to learn all the things that go along with that kind of close relationship.
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