Using embedded paraprofessionals to provide personalized instruction is a promising model for differentiating instruction within the classroom. This study examines two randomized controlled trials of paraprofessional-led tutoring in early-grade math and literacy. However, intent-to-treat (ITT) analyses revealed no overall achievement impacts for either program. We then explore two mechanisms that have surfaced in the tutoring literature as central efficacy moderators—dosage and tailoring—as plausible explanations to these results. While dosage was low for both programs, we estimate significant benefits from treatment assignment at higher-dosage campuses in numeracy (i.e., up to 0.28 SD at 80% progression) but no effect at any level of observed dosage on literacy. Curricular analysis revealed the literacy program's rigid structure may have impeded adaptation to student proficiency while student skill did not predict differences in numeracy program impacts. Supplemented by tutor survey data, these findings suggest that successful implementation of para-tutoring may depend on role prioritization, instructional coordination, and the use of student data to provide responsive instruction.
Beyond the One-Teacher Model: Experimental Evidence on Using Embedded Paraprofessionals as Personalized Instructors
Media Mentions
The prescription was everywhere as the full extent of academic damage wrought by the pandemic first became clear: Set up tutoring programs to catch students up.
The same advice echoed from policy papers, think tanks, and the federal government, which put hundreds of billions into school recovery dollars. Experts and researchers heralded tutoring as an evidence-backed solution for addressing significant academic gaps, and some school systems saw early successes.
Now, though, several evaluations of pandemic-era tutoring programs are showing smaller effects on student progress than expected—or revealing that didn’t improve outcomes at all.
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.
“There is a lot of potential upside to findings like this, even though we wish that students were seeing more across-the-board gains as soon as possible,” she said
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