The Effects of High-Impact Tutoring on Student Attendance: Evidence from a State Initiative

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High-Impact Tutoring Boosts Attendance

Since the pandemic, school districts have faced persistently high rates of chronic absenteeism. A recent study by Stanford researchers Monica G. Lee, Susanna Loeb, and Carly D. Robinson found that high-impact tutoring increases the likelihood that students show up to school.

The study analyzed Washington DC’s High-Impact Tutoring Initiative, which provided math and reading tutoring to K–12 students with the greatest academic needs. The program primarily served Black and economically disadvantaged students, but also included students with disabilities and English Learners. While programming varied in timing, frequency, and group size, all tutoring was delivered in person, in small groups, during the school year. A total of 141 schools participated, reaching more than 5,000 students.

To identify the causal effect of high-impact tutoring on attendance, the researchers tracked the same students over the 2022-23 school year, comparing attendance on days with scheduled tutoring sessions to days without. On average, students were 1.2 percentage points less likely to be absent when tutoring was scheduled, equal to about a 7 percent reduction in daily absenteeism. The impact was greatest for middle school students and for those who were frequently absent the prior year.

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Individualized tutoring can combat chronic absenteeism

A high impact tutoring initiative in Washington, D.C., showed promise for middle schoolers and those with extreme absenteeism, a new report finds.

Dive Brief:

• One-to-one tutoring can lower absenteeism rates by fostering student-teacher relationships and a sense of belonging, making students more willing to go to school, a recent report from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University found.
• The study looked at the High-Impact Tutoring Initiative launched in 2021 to provide math and reading tutoring across 141 Washington, D.C., public K-12 schools — with the greatest focus on serving at-risk students.
• The positive effects were particularly strong for middle school students and students with extreme absenteeism rates in the prior year, who were 13.7% and 7% less likely, respectively, to be absent when tutoring sessions were scheduled, the study found.

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Tutoring may not significantly improve attendance

In early 2024, initial reports indicated that tutoring might not only help kids catch up academically after the pandemic but could also combat chronic absenteeism. More recent research, however, suggests that prediction may have been overly optimistic.

Stanford University researchers have been studying Washington, D.C.’s $33 million investment in tutoring, which provided extra help to more than 5,000 of the district’s 100,000 students in 2022-23, the second year of a three-year tutoring initiative. When researchers looked at these students’ test scores, they found minimal to modest improvements in reading or math.

“We weren’t seeing a ton of big impacts on achievement,” said Monica Lee, one of the Stanford researchers. “But what we were seeing at that point in time were promising findings that the tutoring might be doing something for attendance.” 

That is important because absenteeism soared after the pandemic. The National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford-based organization that studies, promotes and seeks to improve tutoring, issued a March 2024 press release proclaiming that tutoring had increased student attendance in Washington, and could potentially address widespread chronic absenteeism, which was a particular scourge in the city. Soon after, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed an additional $4.8 million for tutoring. 

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