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The District is also investing in what keeps students engaged. The Mayor’s proposed FY27 Grow DC budget expands access to high-impact tutoring, which is one of the most effective interventions for accelerating learning and re‑connecting students who have missed significant instructional time. Research from the National Student Support Accelerator has shown that middle school students receiving tutoring were 11.4% less likely to be absent on days they had scheduled tutoring sessions (equivalent of 3.1 more days of school). The budget also increases funding through a 2.55 percent boost to the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula and continues modernization of school facilities and expansion of career and technical education opportunities.
Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator’s review of tutoring research notes that alignment seems like it would be good practice but doesn’t have a strong research base. Jackson, research manager at the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting, said she wanted to address that gap with a randomized controlled trial.
- | PR News
Stanford University Recognizes CTC's Tutoring Program Design
CTC has earned the Tutoring Program Design Badge from Stanford University's National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA)—awarded in 2025 following a rigorous, evidence-based review conducted by a third-party team of education leaders and experts. The Badge signifies the quality of CTC's tutoring program design and its alignment to Tutoring Quality Standards as assessed by researchers and practitioners. High-dosage virtual 1:1 tutoring programs analyzed in two university-led studies found significant gains for young students’ reading skills.
Dive Brief:
- Struggling readers in Missouri’s Kansas City Public Schools showed statistically significant gains in literacy outcomes when virtual high-impact tutoring was used within a multi-tiered system of support framework, a study from Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator found.
- Using 1:1 teacher-led virtual tutoring program in early literacy, the study analyzed data from 1,550 students across 14 elementary schools in grades 1-4. Students who scored “well below” grade level on benchmark assessments at the start of the 2024-25 school year particularly benefited.
- Participating students also saw significantly higher gains in annual typical growth (10.84 percentage points) and annual stretch growth (5.24 percentage points) on the i-Ready reading assessment.
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- | EdSource
The high-dosage tutoring that Los Angeles Unified maintains it has been providing relies on money from the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP). The lawsuit, which includes other supports outlined in the settlement, gained final approval on Feb. 18 and is intended to help close learning gaps and improve academic performance.
The method specifically caters to students’ individual needs and provides either small group or one-on-one support that complements what they learn in the classroom, according to the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University.
Tutoring has been the focus of learning-recovery initiatives following the pandemic, but many districts have struggled to sustain the labor-intensive and expensive intervention after federal recovery grants ended, and others have seen minimal effects from the programs, largely due to implementation challenges. That reality has pushed districts to reconsider not just whether tutoring works, but when it works best.
Emerging evidence on Ignite Reading and similar programs suggests virtual tutoring can be as effective as in-person tutoring at filling basic literacy skills gaps, though not always less costly. The nonprofit National Student Support Accelerator, which studies tutoring models, estimates high-intensity in-person tutoring programs typically cost $1,000 to $3,000 per student, with some programs topping $4,000 per student. Ignite Reading averages $2,500 per student, including technology and staff support.
- | The 74
In Massachusetts, first graders who spent 15 minutes a day online with a tutor from Ignite Reading stayed on track a year later without additional tutoring, according to data shared exclusively with The 74. Students gained, on average, at least five additional months of learning over their expected growth.
Another virtual program, Hoot Reading, produced positive results in the Kansas City, Missouri, schools. Students who received one-on-one tutoring from certified teachers made greater progress than those who didn’t receive the extra help, new data shows.
“Virtual models are getting stronger,” said Amanda Neitzel, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of the Ignite Reading study. “If you go back just a few years, we had no examples of evidence-proven models and now we are getting them.”
- | The 74
In late 2024, Susanna Loeb, one of the nation’s leading researchers on tutoring, had doubts about the future of a field she’s worked hard to advance.
Over $120 billion in federal COVID relief funds were expiring, leaving school leaders and tutoring providers uncertain whether programs would continue. The incoming administration was focused on slashing Department of Education spending, not issuing new grants.
“We didn’t know if this administration would put anything into education,” said Loeb, a Stanford University professor who studies tutoring programs. “We were worried that all of the experimentation that had been going on and that access to tutoring would drop precipitously.”
- | FutureEd
A second study conducted by researchers at Stanford University examined a different model: Tutor CoPilot, an AI-tool designed to provide guidance to tutors during chat-based tutoring sessions. Different from LearnLM, which gives the supervising tutor only one suggested response, Tutor CoPilot gives tutors three suggested responses that tutors can choose from, edit, or regenerate. In a study conducted between March and May 2024, 1,000 elementary school students were randomly assigned to chat-based sessions with either a human tutor alone or a human tutor using Tutor CoPilot.
Students in the Tutor CoPilot condition were four percentage points more likely to achieve topic mastery than students assigned to human tutors, with the largest gains (up to 9 points) among students assigned to lower-rated and less-experienced tutors. The researchers suggest that these improvements were likely driven by the use of higher-quality instructional practices—tutors using CoPilot were 10 percentage points more likely to prompt students to explain their thinking, while tutors in the control condition were more likely to rely on generic encouragement.