Tutoring Organization

Two studies from Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator released Wednesday used natural language processing technologies to review transcripts from tens of thousands of hours of virtual tutoring sessions. Their goal: to better understand exactly what happens between tutors and students in these sessions.

One study examines the impact of disruptions as revealed through tutor comments, such as “You can’t see me? I’m not sure why you can’t see me” or “Sorry. Did you say something? It was hard to hear.”

Researchers found that 19% of available time was lost to disruptions, whether from technological issues, distracted students, or background noise. Time lost to disruptions was even greater when tutors were working with more than one student, especially if one of the students entered the session late.

As U.S. public schools emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, longtime education policy wonk Liz Cohen saw that in many places, educators were finally taking tutoring seriously. 

For a year and a half in 2023 and 2024, Cohen traversed the country, interviewing educators, researchers and policymakers and observing tutoring sessions in seven states and the District of Columbia. 

Now the vice president of policy for the education group 50CAN, Cohen shares her findings in a new book, out today from Harvard Education Press: The Future of Tutoring: Lessons from 10,000 School District Tutoring Initiatives.

EmpowerK12 provided the research to prove evidence of success including data on specific schools as case studies to help others learn and garner additional support. Importantly, their data and analysis was used in the Stanford study on attendance. The D.C. Policy Center highlighted early stages of implementation with a system-level landscape of high-impact tutoring and a publication sharing early community learning and experiences. When PAVE realized that many parents weren’t aware of HIT offerings, they helped providers and schools think critically about how to communicate with families to ensure they understand what’s available, how to access it, and have the tools and knowledge to help their children extend learning beyond the classroom and tutoring sessions.

As education researchers, we hear directly from district leaders about the realities they and their teams face every day. Leading a school district means weighing competing priorities and managing resources, while finding space for new ideas that promise to strengthen teaching and learning.

Each of these efforts has value and reflects a commitment to improvement. Yet amid the churn of initiatives, it’s worth remembering the strategies that have been proven to work time and again.

Tutoring is one of those strategies. Far from a passing trend that fades after a year, high-impact tutoring is a unicorn in the oft-changing tides of education reform: it is both a centuries-old, pedagogically sound and educator-approved way to teach children, and it’s an approach proven by hundreds of rigorous studies over decades.

Brainfuse has been awarded the Tutoring Program Design Badge by Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA)  in recognition of their alignment with evidence-based Tutoring Quality Standards. This three-year designation signals that Brainfuse’s tutoring program meets nationally recognized criteria for strong design in high-impact tutoring.

The Badge is awarded only after a rigorous review process led by education researchers and practitioners. Brainfuse received “Fully Aligned” ratings in key areas, including tutor qualifications, data use, curriculum quality, instructional dosage, equity alignment, and program cohesion.

While various stakeholders are celebrating the settlement’s outcome, there is still work to be done to ensure students receive adequate academic support. 

When done properly, high-impact tutoring is one of the most researched and effective learning interventions, according to Kathy Bendheim, the strategic advising director for the Stanford Graduate School of Education’s National Student Support Accelerator. And there is research indicating that it can help boost attendance. 

“It will go a really long way to helping those students who fell behind during Covid,” Bendheim said. “But even before Covid, not all students were on grade level, far from it. And so, we believe that this type of tutoring should be incorporated into schools for the long run … for the students who need it.”

Catapult Learning, a division of FullBloom that provides academic intervention programs for students and professional development solutions for teachers in K-12 schools, today announced it earned the Tutoring Program Design Badge from the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) at Stanford University. The designation, valid for three years, recognizes tutoring providers that demonstrate high-quality, research-aligned program design.

The recognition comes at a time when the need for high-impact tutoring (HIT) has never been greater. As schools nationwide work to close learning gaps that widened during the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerate recovery, Catapult Learning stands out for its nearly 50-year legacy of delivering effective academic support to students who need it most.

Upon deeper review, however, these findings leave room for optimism. First, researchers found that lower-cost virtual tutoring models — approximately $1,200/student — were just as impactful as in-person models at $2,000/student, suggesting that tutoring can be less expensive without sacrificing impact.

Second, these findings highlight what's possible when students receivetutoring that comes closer to the definition of "high-impact." For example, the effect of tutoring was largest — about 3.5 months of learning — in a New Mexico district where students received more than 2,000 minutes of tutoring per year. Across all districts in the study, this amount most closely aligned with the recommendations for implementing a high-impact model.

A new collaboration between Stanford’s SCALE and OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, strives to better understand how students and teachers use the popular AI platform and how it impacts learning

Education is one of the fastest-growing use cases of AI products. Students log on for writing assistance, brainstorming, image creation, and more. Teachers tap into tools like attendance trackers, get curriculum support to design learning materials, and much more.

Yet despite the rapid growth – and potential – a substantial gap remains in knowledge about the efficacy of these tools to support learning. 

A new research project from the Generative AI for Education Hub at SCALE, an initiative of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, aims to help fill that gap by studying how ChatGPT is used in K-12 education. In particular, the research will examine how secondary level teachers and students use ChatGPT.