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Susanna Loeb is named to the 2023 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.

The metrics recognize university-based scholars in the U.S. who are doing the most to influence educational policy and practice. The rubric reflects both a scholar's larger body of work and their impact on the public discourse last year.

Join this webinar to better understand what drives effective tutoring and the recent research about On-Demand Tutoring from Carly Robinson, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. 

Dr. Robinson will be joined by LaMarlon J. Wilson, Executive Director of Instruction, Professional Development & Technology of the Mississippi Achievement School District, and Susanne Cramer, Executive Director of School Improvement of Omaha Public Schools to share the practical implications for successful implementation of tutoring in their districts.

Virtual high-impact after school tutoring via one-on-one or small class size(s). Provision of STEM/STEAM after school enrichment programs.

Startup Reading rebalances the resources a teacher employs to deliver reading lessons to the individual student with the appropriate level of personal engagement.

Our approach uses digital reading lessons developed and tested in the classroom and in tutoring sessions to deliver individual reading lessons to the student.

SiSTEM offers online or in-person tutoring sessions in a group or privately. Students age 4 and up can get academic help in science, math, english and foreign language subjects. Our online tutoring sessions are accessible through your smartphone, tablet, or computer right here on our website.

We are a high-dosage reading tutorial program.

Tutoring is one of the most popular strategies for helping students catch up in the wake of the pandemic. But cost, staffing, and scheduling challenges often make it hard for schools to get these programs off the ground.

A sweeping $10 million research effort announced Thursday aims to tackle that problem by studying 31 different tutoring initiatives across the country this school year. The goal is to answer some of the biggest open questions about how schools can put successful tutoring programs in place for more students — and then figure out if they worked.

In a recent study, we report on the implementation of opt-in, on-demand tutoring in partnership with the Aspire Public Schools (a charter management organization, or CMO) in California. The CMO provided 7,000 middle and high school students with free, unlimited access to one-on-one chat-based tutoring during the spring 2021 semester. Students accessed the program from a mobile device and could request help from an available tutor in any core subject. The topic of each tutoring session was usually driven by student questions and the interaction between tutors and students were chat-based with help from a virtual whiteboard to facilitate joint work.

Requires The Iowa Department of Education to form a learning recovery task force to evaluate the degree of learning loss experienced by students due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The task force is expected to study, identify, and recommend remedial measures, of which specialized, individualized tutoring is outlined as an option. The bill outlines requirements for the make-up of the task force which includes: demographics, educator types, and other stakeholders.

Provides families in South Dakota with an educational savings account (ESA). The bill requires The Department of Education to create a savings account for students who withdrew from public schools and currently attend a non-public school. Public funds are deposited into SEAs and are used to aid students in receiving various educational resources, most relevant is private tutoring.

Provides Idaho caregivers with children in grades K-12 with educational grants of up to $1,000 per student, per year, and up to $3,000 per household. Grants are funded through the $50 million “Empowering Parents Grants” program, an initiative to address pandemic-related learning loss and part of Gov. Brad Little’s “Leading Idaho” initiative. The grant program supports families in acquiring a wide range of education-related expenses, some of which include technology, textbooks, tutoring and therapy services, etc.

Funds $47 million in emergency assistance to address the disruptions and challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes a $1.3 million allocation for the teacher pipeline of which $789,730 goes towards the expansion of the Georgia Math & Reading Corps program in Southwest Georgia. The emergency assistance fund allows colleges and universities across Georgia to recruit college students to serve as tutors, specifically in rural districts.

Required K-3 students who received a failing grade in a subject to receive tutoring during the first nine weeks of school. The bill also required additional accelerated instruction for students who continue to receive failing grades in any subject for subsequent grading periods. Schools would have been required to form a committee for each student requiring instruction. The committee would have been responsible for developing an educational plan for the student that would provide accelerated instruction over the course of the semester.

Jack Goodwin was already struggling with math in middle school when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, upending his education even more. His mom, Shelly, knew he needed extra help to catch up.

But Shelly Goodwin couldn’t find a tutor in their small town of Paris, about four hours south of Chicago.

“I would ask the teachers, ‘Do you know anybody that tutors or can you tutor?’,” Shelly Goodwin said. “They would try to meet with [Jack] after school but they had five or six kids after school and they would say, ‘We don’t really know anyone that tutors around here.’”

With reading and math scores plummeting during the pandemic, educators and parents are now turning their attention to how kids can catch up. In the following Q&A, Susanna Loeb, an education economist at Brown University, shines a light on the best ways to use tutoring to help students get back on track.

Sonnemann said Australia should look to the US in expanding research in tutoring, pointing to Brown University using targeted studies with government districts to examine the roll-out of small-group tuition programs and how well they help students catch up.

She said given the size of NSW’s COVID-19 tutoring initiative, it was vital parents and schools know how well it was working and governments should consider rolling out long-term, systematic catch-up tuition.

High-Impact tutoring – one-to-one or small group instruction in which a human tutor supports students in an academic subject area – has emerged as the primary strategy for addressing Covid19-induced learning interruptions. As tutoring expands nationally, what can we learn from existing research to inform effective planning and implementation?

The Education Week Spotlight on Tutoring is a collection of articles hand-picked by our editors for their insights on the advantages of tutoring as an academic recovery tool, how districts can expand access to tutoring, long-term investments in tutoring, initiatives that provide support to tutoring programs, tutoring strategies that combat learning loss, and more.

Pearl's data, research and analysis partners include the Annenberg Institute at Brown University  with a mission to equalize and improve educational opportunities through actionable knowledge, human development and broad engagement and its National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA). Both organizations consulted with ISU and ITI in the planning and development, and establishing success metrics for the statewide tutoring program.

Research shows that high-impact tutoring can produce learning gains for a variety of students, but which tutoring designs are most effective from a cost and academic perspective? Three school districts across the country will begin data-driven experiments to answer that question and more as part of a research project led by Littera Education. The project, which is funded by a Gates Foundation grant, will use the Littera Tutoring Management System (TMS) in conjunction with assessment and curriculum from Renaissance.

Evidence suggests that, over time, tutoring in small groups is beneficial, regardless of whether children are in a rural, suburban, or urban environment. In fact, research published in 2021 by Brown University's Annenberg Institute for School Reform showed that consistent tutoring sessions can accelerate learning by two to 10 months.