Section 5: Develop Instruction

Effective high-impact tutoring requires intentional planning across multiple dimensions that drive student outcomes. Constructing tutoring sessions with intentionality in several essential components creates a strong foundation. This section supports Element 3: Instruction of the Tutoring Quality Standards and is organized into five areas :

Research Insights

Research provides the following guidance to create effective tutoring programs:

5.1 Grouping Students

5.2 Creating Tutor Consistency and Building Student-Tutor Relationships

  • A consistent tutor — where each student meets with the same tutor throughout the program — builds strong, motivating relationships and ensures continuity in learning.
  • Tutors who regularly meet with the same students foster meaningful connections to improve student outcomes. One study found that students’ attendance in tutoring increased by four percentage points when they and their tutors completed a survey highlighting shared interests and tutors received reminders about these similarities along with prompts to integrate them into subsequent tutoring sessions.
  • Research on youth mentoring programs suggests that positive mentoring relationships can have a wide range of benefits for the social-emotional well-being of students.

5.3 Securing High-Quality Instructional Materials (HQIM)

5.4 Strengthening Instructional Practices and Establishing Routines and Structures

  • Remediation, or giving students simpler, previous grade-level materials, can cause them to fall further behind the grade-level material.
  • Rather than reteaching past content, tutors should focus on key missed concepts and skills most critical to access the upcoming content. Tutors play a critical role in helping struggling students catch up while easing the burden on classroom teachers. However, they must reinforce foundational skills while staying connected to students’ current classroom learning.

5.5 Determining Tutor Dosage and Optimizing Student-Tutor Ratio

  • The most effective programs maintain a student-to-tutor ratio of no more than three students per tutor. Beyond this, the approach shifts to small-group instruction, requiring highly skilled teachers to sustain learning gains across students.
  • One-on-one tutoring is the most effective model for both preschool and elementary students. However, less costly two-on-one tutoring programs also lead to positive learning gains.
  • A middle school math virtual tutoring program found that one-on-one tutoring led to greater gains in math achievement compared to three-on-one tutoring. However, in elementary math, small-group tutoring can yield equal or better results than one-on-one tutoring. The ideal ratio depends on student age, subject matter, and tutoring format (in-person vs. virtual). The most effective tutoring programs maintain a maximum of three students per tutor.
  • The Match Corps/Saga Education, which pairs one tutor with two students, has demonstrated significant positive outcomes across numerous studies.
  • Grouping students by skill level or language learner status may increase the effectiveness of tutoring.

Read the Full Research

Ander, R., Guryan, J., Ludwig, J. (2016). Improving academic outcomes for disadvantaged students: Scaling up individualized tutorials. Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Full-Paper-1.pdf

Behavioral Insights Team. (2022). Common ground: Helping tutors and pupils find similarities boosts session attendance. https://www.bi.team/blogs/common-ground-helping-tutors-and-pupils-find-similarities-boosts-session-attendance/

Cortes, K. E., Kortecamp, K., Loeb, S., & Robinson, C. D. (2025). A scalable approach to high-impact tutoring for young readers. Learning and Instruction, 95, 102021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2024.102021

DuBois, D. L., Portillo, N., Rhodes, J. E., Silverthorn, N., & Valentine, J. C. (2011). How effective are mentoring programs for youth? A systematic assessment of the evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 12(2), 57-91. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100611414806 

Jacob, R. T., Armstrong, C., & Willard, J. A. (2015). Mobilizing volunteer tutors to improve student literacy: Implementation, impacts, and costs of the Reading Partners program. MDRC. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED558508.pdf 

Kraft, M A., and Lovison, V.S. (2024). The effect of student-tutor ratios: Experimental evidence from a pilot online math tutoring program (EdWorkingPaper No. 24-976). Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/87ma-e949

Makori, A., Burch, P. and Susanna Loeb. (2024). Scaling high-impact tutoring: School level perspectives on implementation challenges and strategies (EdWorkingPaper: 24-923). Annenberg Institute at Brown University. https://doi.org/10.26300/h8z5-t461

Nickow, A., Oreopoulos, P., & Quan, V. (2024). The promise of tutoring for preK–12 learning: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. American Educational Research Journal, 61(1), 74–107. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312231208687

Nickow, A., Oreopoulos, P., & Quan, V. (2020). The impressive effects of tutoring on preK-12 learning: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the experimental evidence (NBER Working Paper No. 27476). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27476

Pellegrini, M., Lake, C., Neitzel, A., & Slavin, R. E. (2021). Effective programs in elementary mathematics: A meta-analysis. AERA Open, 7. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858420986211 

TNTP. (2018). The opportunity myth: What students can show us about how school is letting them down — and how to fix it. https://tntp.org/publication/the-opportunity-myth/

White, S., Groom-Thomas, L., & Loeb, S. (2023). A systematic review of research on tutoring implementation: Considerations when undertaking complex instructional supports for students (EdWorkingPaper No. 22-652). Annenberg Institute at Brown University. https://doi.org/10.26300/wztf-wj14

Zimmer, R., Hamilton, L., Christina, R. (2010). After-school tutoring in the context of No Child Left Behind: Effectiveness of two programs in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. Economics of Education Review, 29, 118–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2009.02.005