Researcher

“We have a lot of work to do,” Hudson said, which is why the 43,500-student district has zeroed in on providing high-impact tutoring.

Joined by Stanford University’s Nancy Waymack, Soto and Hudson shared what Portland has learned from its efforts during a July 12 session at UNITED, the National Conference on School Leadership.

High-impact tutoring is a data-driven service that is embedded into the school day and uses consistent, well-supported tutors, said Waymack, director of research, partnerships and policy for Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator. The tutors use high-quality instructional materials and hold sessions at least three times a week in small groups of no more than four students, she said. 

A high impact tutoring initiative in Washington, D.C., showed promise for middle schoolers and those with extreme absenteeism, a new report finds.

Dive Brief:

• One-to-one tutoring can lower absenteeism rates by fostering student-teacher relationships and a sense of belonging, making students more willing to go to school, a recent report from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University found.
• The study looked at the High-Impact Tutoring Initiative launched in 2021 to provide math and reading tutoring across 141 Washington, D.C., public K-12 schools — with the greatest focus on serving at-risk students.
• The positive effects were particularly strong for middle school students and students with extreme absenteeism rates in the prior year, who were 13.7% and 7% less likely, respectively, to be absent when tutoring sessions were scheduled, the study found.

FEV Tutor further evolved last year when it announced a new AI-enhanced platform, Tutor CoPilot. The tool makes tutors more effective by giving them guiding questions to ask students. In a randomized trial, the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University, which studies tutoring models, found that when less-experienced tutors used the AI support, student math scores increased an average of 9 percentage points. 

Over the past couple of years, scaling well-researched solutions has been shown to also counter the negative effects of the pandemic, Loeb said, from widening achievement gaps and missed school time, to poorer social and emotional development. Her team recently launched the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) to address educational inequities resulting from the pandemic. NSSA conducts research on the most promising tutoring practices and works with district leaders and others to provide research-backed guidance on implementing high-impact tutoring. 

“Our students deserve this work,” Loeb said. “From our research, we learn so much about how to engage students and accelerate their learning. The practical, easy-to-use learnings from research need to reach decision makers so that our students can benefit.”

Tips by Text and NSSA are part of SCALE, Loeb’s new initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, a university-wide effort addressing some of the most challenging issues in education through research, partnerships, and technological innovation. 

Oakland REACH and district staff trained tutors based on the National Student Support Accelerator’s high-impact tutoring program, which requires weekly small-group support, close monitoring of student progress, alignment with district curriculum and oversight by school staff.