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.”
That is important because absenteeism soared after the pandemic. The National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford-based organization that studies, promotes and seeks to improve tutoring, issued a March 2024 press release proclaiming that tutoring had increased student attendance in Washington, and could potentially address widespread chronic absenteeism, which was a particular scourge in the city. Soon after, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed an additional $4.8 million for tutoring.
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