Tutoring research and how schools are using tutoring in pandemic recovery
I've been writing about homeschooling as the most promising way to help kids catch up intellectually since the pandemic closed down schools almost three years ago. I am frequently asked about research on tutoring. Tutoring is it effective? How many schools are involved? How is everything going so far? In this column, I will review the data for tutoring as well as what we currently know about pandemic tutoring. For those interested in learning more, there are links to references throughout the piece, as well as a list of Hechinger Reports items on tutoring at the end.
Researchers were focusing on tutoring as a strategy to aid children who were considerably behind grade level even before the outbreak. Researchers frequently reported poor outcomes from after-school and summer school programs because pupils did not show up or did not want to attend to school on vacation.
Yet, evidence favoring tutoring has been accumulating for more than 30 years, as tutoring groups developed reading and math programs, collaborated with schools, and allowed researchers to participate. The outcomes have been stunning. The average improvements in over 100 randomized controlled trials in which pupils were randomly allocated to receive tutoring were comparable to shifting an average child from the 50th to the 66th percentile. That's a huge leap in schooling. One estimate likened the benefit of tutoring to an additional five months of learning above a student's normal development in a school year. There are no magic bullets in education, but tutoring comes the closest.
Nevertheless, what researchers imply by "tutoring" is not what many people believe. It is not offered by the type of tutors that wealthy families could engage at home for their children. According to research, sessions once or twice a week do not significantly improve success, nor does regular after-school homework assistance. Tutoring, on the other hand, provides enormous improvements in reading and math when done on a daily basis by paid, well-trained tutors who follow an established curriculum or lesson plans that are related to what the student is studying in class. Productive tutoring sessions are held during the school day, when attendance is required, rather than after school. It's referred to as "high-dosage" or "high-impact" instruction by researchers.
Consider the distinction between outpatient visits and acute treatment in a hospital. Tutoring at high doses is more like the latter. Hiring and training tutors is costly, and this form of tutoring can cost schools $4,000 or more per kid each year. (While tutoring does not have to be one-on-one, studies have discovered that well-designed tutoring programs may be quite effective when tutors work with two or three students.)
The Biden administration has advised schools to make advantage of the $122 billion in pandemic recovery money for tutoring. Nonetheless, it has been difficult for schools to establish tutoring programs. For starters, hiring tutors in a robust labor market is difficult when there aren't many individuals searching for employment and "help wanted" signs are everywhere. The practical difficulties are complex: tutor training, changing the school day to accommodate time for tutoring times, obtaining physical space to organize tutoring sessions, and working out how to enable a constant flow of adult tutors in and out of school facilities. There are also difficult judgments to be made, such as which pupils should be tutored and which curriculums to use. Educators must become operations specialists and create a comprehensive system. In the midst of everything else they're juggling, they've formed a new organization.
So yet, statistics on how many schools have really introduced tutoring is patchy. It's unknown how many of those who have launched successful high-dosage programs and whose pupils are receiving it.
Based on a December 2022 study of 1,000 schools, the US Department of Education estimates that more than four out of every five schools offered some form of tutoring to some of their students during the 2022-23 school year. The majority stated they provided "normal" tutoring, such as once-a-week after-school extra-help sessions. Just 37% indicated they were providing "high-dosage" instruction. Even among the 37 percent of schools that reported providing high-dose tutoring, just 30 percent of children received it. This amounts to an estimated 10% of public school kids nationally receiving high-dosage tutoring, which is significantly less than the demand. According to the same poll, school leaders believe that half of their children are falling behind grand level.
Sixteen states are using $470 million of their federal pandemic recovery funds to launch large tutoring programs that will reach millions of children, according to a separate February 2023 report by the Council of Chief State School Officers, a group of public officials who head state education departments that oversee elementary, middle and high schools. Among them are Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana and Tennessee. Another four states are sending more $200 million directly to families to hire their own tutors. Indiana, for example, gives families up to $1,000 per qualifying student to spend on high-impact tutoring. (Local school districts are spending much more than a total of $700 million on tutoring. The school officers’ report covers only direct state spending.)
In many cases, tutoring this year is taking place virtually over screens instead of in person. Often, students are texting with tutors and not hearing or seeing one another – akin to a customer service chat session. But there are also tutoring companies that are trying to recreate an in-person tutoring experience through live video and audio. It feels more like a Zoom meeting with a shared whiteboard that both student and teacher can write on.
It remains to be seen if the outsized academic gains from in-person tutoring can be replicated online. A study of low-income middle schoolers in Chicago was disappointing. The program was riddled with problems: poor attendance, technical glitches and slow recruitment of college student volunteers to serve as tutors. Students who were assigned tutoring didn’t catch up more than those who didn’t get that extra help. But there were some signs of hope, too. Kids who started the tutoring sooner made larger academic gains.
Another pandemic study of virtual tutoring for low-income immigrant middle schoolers in Italy yielded good results when students received four hours a week, but much worse results when they got only two hours a week. When the hours were halved, the academic gains dropped by more than half.
Saga Education, which has a strong track record in in-person tutoring, is presently experimenting to see if its high-dosage methodology works as well in the virtual environment. I'm looking forward to seeing their data when it becomes available. I witnessed Saga's virtual tutoring in a New York City high school earlier this month, where kids sat in a classroom and connected to their algebra tutors through computers. I was struck by how much more engaged the pupils were when the tutor was physically there. Several ninth graders were uncomfortable being photographed and turned their laptops away from the camera. It was more difficult to establish an easy, cordial connection between student and tutor.
School administrators have told me that it is hard to squeeze in three or more tutoring sessions a week, or make sure that students log in when sessions are scheduled. No-shows are common.
Many schools have purchased unlimited online tutoring from for-profit companies, such as Paper, Tutor.com and Varsity Tutors, where students can login anytime for homework help. Companies have marketed this voluntary 24/7 tutoring as high-dosage because, in theory, students could use it frequently. And it is much cheaper for schools; it can cost $40 per student instead of $4,000 for in-person, high-dosage tutoring. But several reports, such as this one in Fairfax County, Virginia, find that students aren’t using it very much, and the students who need tutoring the most are the least likely to use these drop-in tutoring services.
Efforts by researchers to increase usage through text nudges convinced only 27 percent of the students at one charter school chain in California to try an online tutor even once. More than 70 percent of the students never logged into the tutoring platform. Among students who needed tutoring the most because they had failed a class with a D or an F, only 12 percent ever logged on. Just 26 of the 7,000 students in the charter network used it three times or more a week, which is what researchers are recommending.
Even though the services are marketed as one-to-one tutoring, some tutoring companies, such as Paper, have their tutors handling multiple students at once. Several tutors explained to me how challenging it is to juggle homework questions from different grades and different subjects simultaneously. Students sometimes have to wait patiently for their tutor to reply to a text while the tutor is texting with others. Relying on students’ homework questions, instead of using a structured tutoring curriculum, makes it hard to know if you’re teaching students the topics they need to catch up. Part of the magic of tutoring may be forming a long-term relationship with a caring adult. But tutors at several of these companies rarely see the same student twice. It’s no wonder that most students aren’t eager to log in.
Even though there’s good evidence for the effectiveness of intensive tutoring, districts are struggling to build functional programs. The for-profit tutoring services many schools are buying in the meantime don’t make the grade.
Previous Proof Points columns on tutoring:
How the life of an online tutor can resemble that of an assembly line worker
Many schools are buying on-demand tutoring but a study finds that few students are using it
Uncertain evidence for online tutoring
Research evidence increases for intensive tutoring
Even older teens benefit from catch-up classes
Takeaways from research on tutoring to address coronavirus learning loss
Cheaper human tutors can be highly effective, studies show
Hechinger coverage of tutoring:
How one district went all-in on a tutoring program to catch kids up
The simple intervention that could lift kids out of ‘Covid slide’
This math tutoring program gets ‘blockbuster’ results in high-poverty schools
Related Proof Points columns on pandemic learning loss:
Federal funds to combat pandemic learning loss don’t reflect need
Third graders struggling the most to recover in reading after the pandemic
Several surprises in gloomy NAEP report
Six puzzling questions from the disastrous NAEP results
More studies mark the pandemic’s toll on student achievement
Three reports on student achievement during the pandemic
