When many Washington, D.C., schools launched intensive tutoring programs after the COVID-19 closures, staff observed a pleasant surprise: More kids started showing up each day.
The higher attendance rates – on top of improved math and reading skills – proved a welcome side effect of an initiative aimed at bridging students’ learning gaps.
Education disruptions during the pandemic triggered a scramble to help students in the United States who had fallen behind academically. Many school districts quickly zeroed in on tutoring – from online to in person. It put a strategy once considered a privilege for the wealthy few into the mainstream. Now, as far as some educators and researchers are concerned, results like those in Washington are bolstering the case for tutoring as an integral part of public schooling.
“This is most likely to happen if parents both want this and believe that they can get this – and deserve to get this – at school,” says Susanna Loeb, a professor of education at Stanford University in California.
Amid the flurry of activity in recent years, researchers and policy advocates are increasingly pointing to a specific kind of tutoring as the most effective. Known as “high-impact” or “high-dosage,” it generally refers to tutoring that happens at least three times a week for 30-minute sessions with groups of four or fewer students. And if it occurs during the regular school day? Even better.
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