Research Studies

I spent the past year visiting Jackson and eight other schools across three states and the District of Columbia to understand how and why their successful tutoring programs work and the challenges they’ve had to navigate. Our FutureEd study also included dozens of conversations with educators, school district leaders, providers, researchers and others who have turned to tutoring to combat learning loss after COVID.

When Muriel Bowser, the mayor of the District of Columbia, announced in early March that her administration had carved out $4.8 million for “high impact tutoring” in its 2024-25 budget, she was met with thunderous applause.

Bowser had made the announcement to a room packed with administrators, tutoring service providers and policy analysts. But the excitement was tempered somewhat by questions about how far these funds would go: Is this appropriation enough? What about tutoring in the next year?

As the federal stimulus package—ESSER—winds down, states are racing against the clock to find other sustainable funding sources to keep tutoring alive in their schools. So far, states have taken a patchwork approach. Some states are creating policies that would embed tutoring as a service; other states have relied on one-time grants.

Educators are eager to launch high-impact tutoring, however, they also reported that improvements were needed to ensure tutors focused on the interventions most needed by students.

Most K12 leaders would agree that high-dosage tutoring is now a key part of instruction. Most would also note difficulties with finding adequate space and funding, hiring high-quality tutors and encouraging students to attend.

Those hurdles and, more importantly, the solutions are explained by Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator in a new study of a large urban district and a charter system. The strategies identified should help administrators scale successful tutoring programs to help more students stay on track, the report’s authors contend.

Today, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) shared early findings from a study that shows high-impact tutoring (HIT) has positive attendance benefits for DC students. The preliminary findings from research conducted by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University provide evidence that DC students participating in HIT were more likely to attend school on days they had a tutoring session scheduled. While the comprehensive results of this study will be published later, these initial findings highlight the potential of HIT to support stronger school attendance.

“HIT is a research-based intervention that has long been available for higher-income families. Our investment is helping level the playing field of access, and we are seeing it pay off. HIT is helping to reinforce the importance and power of consistent, positive relationships with students and the adults who support them at school,” said State Superintendent of Education Dr. Christina Grant. “These early findings show us what we would expect from this evidence-based intervention – one-on-one and small group, personalized high-impact tutoring sessions that are grounded in strong relationships have benefits that extend beyond improved math and literacy scores.”

High-quality tutoring programs not only get students up to speed in reading and math, they can also reduce absenteeism, a new study shows.

Focused on schools in Washington, D.C., the preliminary results show middle school students attended an additional three days and those in the elementary grades improved their attendance by two days when they received tutoring during regular school hours.  

But high-impact tutoring —defined as at least 90 minutes a week with the same tutor, spread over multiple sessions — had the greatest impact on students who missed 30% or more of the prior school year. Their attendance improved by at least five days, according to the study from the National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford University-based center that conducts tutoring research. 

Students were less likely to be absent on days when they had a scheduled tutoring session, according to study by National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University.

PALO ALTO, C.A., March 1, 2024 – Schools nationwide are grappling with significant challenges related to student absenteeism. In response, D.C. schools along with many other states and school districts have implemented strategies ranging from texting interventions to home visits. D.C. schools have also prioritized mitigating pandemic-related learning losses through the widespread adoption of high-impact tutoring programs. High-impact tutoring seeks to develop strong relationships between students and their tutors in order to increase student motivation and engagement in their academic coursework, but could also benefit attendance.

Students continue to struggle academically after the pandemic, yet federal relief funds to support their recovery are set to expire soon. As a result, state and school district leaders are searching for the most cost-effective strategies to help students recoup learning. A recent working paper presents the results of a randomized controlled trial of an early reading tutoring program designed to be affordable at scale.

Researchers Kalena Cortes, Karen Kortecamp, Susanna Loeb, and Carly Robinson of the National Student Support Accelerator randomly assigned 800 Florida kindergartners to receive or not receive tutoring in early reading. Tutoring provider Chapter One specialized in embedding part-time tutors into classrooms for “short bursts” of individual tutoring. Tutors met one-to-one with the assigned kindergartners for five-to-10 minute tutoring sessions over the course of the year. Kindergartners receiving tutoring also took part in 15-minute daily independent practice sessions using a Chapter One tablet. The tutors tracked student progress and met frequently with teachers to review the data they collected digitally. Chapter One used that data to tailor its tutoring to students’ evolving needs over time, adjusting session length and frequency based on each student’s progress over the year.