Virtual instruction has boomed after the COVID-19 pandemic, including the use of virtual environments within in-person schools. But, research has provided little evidence about student experiences on these virtual platforms, nor how to improve the use of these platforms. Through natural language… Read more.
Research Findings
Tutoring has played a significant role in pandemic-related learning recovery, supporting student learning and engagement. A recent randomized controlled trial estimated that one-on-one virtual early literacy tutoring was nearly twice as effective as two-on-one tutoring for improving student… Read more.
Student absenteeism surged during and after the pandemic, harming engagement and achievement. We evaluate the impact of Washington DC's High-Impact Tutoring (HIT) Initiative—designed to mitigate learning loss through targeted academic supports—on student absenteeism. Using daily attendance data… Read more.
- Gender disparities in STEM persist despite girls performing as well as boys academically, suggesting girls may benefit from role models who shape their perceptions of STEM. We examine whether female math tutors influence girls’ STEM interest, attendance, and performance. We randomly assigned 422… Read more.
This paper presents the results from a randomized controlled trial of Chapter One, an early elementary reading tutoring program that embeds part-time tutors into the classroom to provide short bursts of 1:1 instruction. Eligible kindergarten students were randomly assigned to receive… Read more.
- In-person tutoring has been shown to improve academic achievement. Though less well-researched, virtual tutoring has also shown a positive effect on achievement but has only been studied in grade five or above. We present findings from the first randomized controlled trial of virtual tutoring for… Read more.
- College students make job decisions without complete information. As a result, they may rely on misleading heuristics (“interesting jobs pay badly”) and pursue options misaligned with their goals. We test whether highlighting job characteristics changes decision making. We find increasing the… Read more.
High-impact tutoring has emerged as a primary school district investment for addressing learning loss that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. While existing research shows that high-impact tutoring is effective for accelerating student learning, this study examined the school-level… Read more.
- Over the past three school years, districts and states have worked to recover the academic ground they lost over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and chip away at stubborn gaps in academic performance. Many turned to high-impact tutoring, a research-based approach to providing individualized… Read more.
- A central challenge facing education leaders is allocating limited resources in pursuit of their priorities. Three of their critical resources are time, money, and people. A school's master schedule reflects the allocation of all three of these critical resources and ultimately determines the… Read more.
- This study provides compelling evidence that tutoring can do more than boost test scores; it can actually get students back in the classroom. On average, students were 1.2 percentage points less likely to be absent on days when they were scheduled to receive tutoring, suggesting that they are… Read more.
- In this study, we analyze the contracts between districts and vendors of instructional services and products to understand how relationships between these parties are structured. We compare three types of contracts: those developed with the support of SEF’s Outcomes-Based Contracting (OBC) Cohort… Read more.