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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.
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.
- | EdSource
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.”