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- | FutureEd
A new study by Stanford researchers Hsiaolin Hsieh, David Gormley, Carly D. Robinson, and Susanna Loeb suggests why one-on-one tutoring has been found to produce double the gains in student learning than two-on-one tutoring.
Analyzing 16,629 transcripts from 2022-23 school year tutoring sessions from an earlier study that established the greater gains under one-on-one tutoring, the researchers examined how tutors allocated their time and attention across both one-on-one and two-on-one formats. The tutoring sessions focused on early literacy and served kindergarten through second grade students, with 510 students receiving one-on-one tutoring and 570 students receiving two-on-one tutoring. All students met with their tutor online for 20 minutes during the school day, four times per week.
The most recent of these, from researchers at Stanford University’s SCALE Initiative, examined math and reading tutoring programs in a large, urban district during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. Neither led to overall gains in academic achievement.
But when researchers dug deeper into the data, they identified implementation problems that could be driving these null effects.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence around tutoring in a post-COVID landscape that suggests the effectiveness of a program hinges on the nitty-gritty details of how it is run—how often students meet with their tutors, for instance, or whether lessons are tailored to their specific needs.
Studying these implementation details could help school systems build more effective tutoring initiatives in the long run, said Elizabeth Huffaker, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Florida, and the lead author on the SCALE paper.
The case study examines how the New Jersey Tutoring Corps was established as a high-dosage tutoring initiative to help K-8 students recover from pandemic-era learning loss. It shows how the nonprofit built strong partnerships with districts, embedded tutors during the school day and after school, aligned instruction to state standards, and scaled rapidly across urban, suburban, and rural sites. For education leaders in districts, states, or nonprofits, the study offers practical insights into structuring and implementing a tutoring program with fidelity: how to design tutor-to-student ratios, schedule sessions, co-design with school partners, and build capacity for sustainability. It illustrates how evidence-informed models can be translated into actionable programming, and invites leaders to reflect on how they might adapt these lessons to their own contexts.
The report concludes that four years after the height of the pandemic, there is widespread use of evidence-based and people-powered student supports–such as high-intensity tutoring, mentoring, student success coaching, postsecondary transition coaching, and wraparound supports–in public schools across the United States. But, public school principals indicate that continued growth in these interventions is needed to meet the scale of student needs.
The report emphasizes that while implementation barriers exist to expanding evidence-based programs, there is a subset of schools that are proving that serving students at scale is possible, and outlines a range of resources and opportunities to support expansion of high-quality programs.
- | The 74
Experts view the findings as a cautionary tale of how tutoring can go wrong.
The district had to wait on background checks for tutors, many students were still chronically absent and the tutoring sessions often conflicted with other lessons or special events. As a result, students didn’t receive the 30 hours or more required under a state law mandating tutoring for those who failed the annual state test. Instead of five days a week as planned, 81% of the students attended tutoring three or fewer days, and most students worked with a different tutor every time they attended a session.
The findings reinforce the importance of protecting the time students are supposed to receive tutoring, said Elizabeth Huffaker, an assistant professor of education at the University of Florida and the lead author of the study.
High-dosage models — featuring individualized sessions held at least three times a week with the same, well-trained tutor — can still “drive really significant learning gains,” she said, “but in the field, things are always a little bit more complicated.”
St. Paul / Minneapolis — East Side Learning Center (ESLC) announced today that its High-Dosage Tutoring program has been awarded the Tutoring Program Design Badge by National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) at Stanford University.
The Badge was granted following a thorough evaluation by a third-party team of education leaders, who assessed ESLC’s tutoring program against rigorous “Tutoring Quality Standards.” The Badge signals to states and K–12 districts that the program’s design aligns with research-based best practices. Learn more at: National Student Support Accelerator.
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.
- | The 74
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.