Join this invitation-only gathering of researchers, district, state, and higher education leaders, tutoring providers, and funders to:
Notably, research by Susanna Loeb (Stanford University) revealed that tutoring methods and strategies can vary dramatically both in their design features and student outcomes. Loeb’s team of researchers discovered that in particular “high impact” tutoring strategies have demonstrated statistically significant effects on student learning in math and reading. High impact tutoring contains the following features:
What led to the rapid spread and adoption of tutoring as a solution? What will it take to bring tutoring to the scale? And what can the science of advocacy teach us about how other policy ideas might follow a similar path? In this AdvocacyLabs webinar, FutureEd Policy Director Liz Cohen will moderate a discussion with panelists including Stanford University Professor Susanna Loeb, JerseyCAN Executive Director Paula White, and 50CAN CEO Marc Porter Magee.
As excitement grows around tutoring as a strategy to combat learning loss, advocates have rightly been encouraged by the growing body of evidence demonstrating the efficacy of tutoring interventions. To date, however, little research has examined the impact of fully virtual tutoring on very young students. Hardly a technicality, this distinction matters because younger children are less likely to have the technical and self-regulation skills upon which virtual learning depends. Now, a new study by researchers from Stanford, Vanderbilt, and UnboundED analyzes the benefits of virtual tutoring specifically for early elementary students.
Less than a third of Colorado eighth-graders score proficiently in math. So, Colorado has invested heavily in high-impact tutoring programs — $20 million allocated in federal and state dollars since the pandemic. Colorado was also one of five states to get a $1 million grant from Accelerate, a nonprofit that aims to make
Tutoring is a win-win job for college and K-12 students, but the question remains how best to connect college students who need these jobs with the paid tutoring positions available. In a recent working paper with colleagues, we report on a randomized controlled trial that tested whether highlighting the different benefits of a tutoring job can drive changes in tutor applications and employment. We partnered with Grand Valley State University (GVSU) to recruit paid tutors for a campus initiative started in 2020 to support Michigan K-12 students. Tutoring at GVSU was not only a paid position—it was a highly paid position on campus. Tutors could earn up to $17.70 per hour, the highest rate in the GVSU student hourly wage range and well above the state minimum wage at the time of the study ($10.10).
Decades of research have shown that high-impact tutoring is the most effective support to transform outcomes for struggling students. High-impact tutoring offers students access to a trained adult who has content knowledge, pedagogical training, and provides one-on-one or small group sessions. Over time, the tutor develops a relationship with the student, builds their confidence, and adapts the learning dynamic to the student’s needs in real-time. The best tutoring pairs consistent intervention with point-in-time assessments that monitor progress and inform instruction to catalyze growth.
School and district leaders are often under the impression that there are limited financial resources to bring such individualized support to students. Fortunately, there is an array of funding resources at the district and school level to create and sustain high-impact tutoring programs for the students who need the support the most.
Regardless of the potential hiccups along the way, data has shown that colleges and universities are beginning to tap more into Federal Work-Study funds to hire tutors, said Nancy Waymack, director of research partnerships and policy at Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator, a nonprofit research organization that promotes high-impact tutoring in schools.
For Waymack, it’s refreshing to see students earn pay for tutoring considering the role has historically been viewed as a volunteering opportunity.
“Using Work-Study, using AmeriCorps funds, other federal resources or resources that come from other places to pay tutors just opens up the field a lot more for many different students who otherwise might have been doing another job on campus,” Waymack said. “And they wouldn’t have that opportunity to be in a school, work with kids, and see educators who are teaching every day that they might want to emulate somewhere down the road.”
Funding is the biggest barrier to tutoring in schools, says Alvin Makori, a doctoral student at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. Makori co-authored a research paper about the challenges to schools offering tutor services at scale. The paper — based on surveys of teachers at charter and public schools in California — also noted concerns about tutor quality and trouble finding the space and time to work tutoring into the school day as problem areas for the schools it inspected. (The study did not look at virtual high-dose tutoring, of the kind provided by some of the organizations discussed here.)
The New Jersey Department of Education recently released a resource to provide information on the benefits and essential design elements of effective, high-impact tutoring programs to support local education agencies’ efforts to meet the increased needs of students, according to an advisory.
The resource – “High-Impact Tutoring: An Evidence-Based Strategy to Accelerate Learning” – was developed in response to the strong interest in designing and implementing tutoring programs through both federal and discretionary funding streams. It aims to assist school districts in designing and planning high-impact tutoring programs.
I spent the past year visiting Jackson and eight other schools across three states and the District of Columbia to understand how and why their successful tutoring programs work and the challenges they’ve had to navigate. Our FutureEd study also included dozens of conversations with educators, school district leaders, providers, researchers and others who have turned to tutoring to combat learning loss after COVID.
Educators are eager to launch high-impact tutoring, however, they also reported that improvements were needed to ensure tutors focused on the interventions most needed by students.
Most K12 leaders would agree that high-dosage tutoring is now a key part of instruction. Most would also note difficulties with finding adequate space and funding, hiring high-quality tutors and encouraging students to attend.
Those hurdles and, more importantly, the solutions are explained by Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator in a new study of a large urban district and a charter system. The strategies identified should help administrators scale successful tutoring programs to help more students stay on track, the report’s authors contend.
Those efforts have helped pay dividends for attendance, too. In the second study, released earlier this month, researchers with Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator found that students are 7 percent less likely to be absent on days they have scheduled tutoring sessions. The study, conducted over the 2022-23 school year, examined absenteeism rates of 4,478 students in 141 schools in the District of Columbia.
“There are lots of reasons why students are absent. Being disengaged in school is one reason,” said Nancy Waymack, the director of partnerships and policy at the NSSA."Tutoring is one way that students can have one more meaningful relationship in school. Tutoring can be one tool to move the needle in the right direction.”