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04/10/2024. Article
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.
04/02/2024. Article
Those efforts have helped pay dividends for attendance, too. In the second study, released earlier this month, researchers with Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator found that students are 7 percent less likely to be absent on days they have scheduled tutoring sessions. The study, conducted over the 2022-23 school year, examined absenteeism rates of 4,478 students in 141 schools in the District of Columbia.
“There are lots of reasons why students are absent. Being disengaged in school is one reason,” said Nancy Waymack, the director of partnerships and policy at the NSSA."Tutoring is one way that students can have one more meaningful relationship in school. Tutoring can be one tool to move the needle in the right direction.”
03/21/2024. Article
The mayor’s announcement about the funding for high-impact tutoring — a specific kind of academic help that consists of frequent, small-group sessions — came at a citywide summit on the topic. She touted the effort’s success, including a recent Stanford University study that found that students in D.C. were more likely to attend school when they had sessions. “Last school year, we found that students enrolled in high-impact tutoring were likely to reach their math and literacy goals,” Bowser said.
03/20/2024. Article
Preliminary findings from research conducted by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University provide evidence that high-impact tutoring has positive attendance benefits for DC students. The District is also seeing early signs of academic impact as well, with at-risk students who receive the appropriate amount of high-impact tutoring nearly 7% more likely to achieve their growth goals than at-risk students receiving less tutoring, according to interim assessment data.
02/20/2024. Article
The following list serves as a compilation of potential resources. CDE strongly recommends that school districts conduct thorough vetting to ensure alignment with local guidelines for instructional materials. By school districts ensuring customized interventions for their distinct needs and standards, they can establish a resilient foundation for academic success in mathematics.
High-impact tutoring offers personalized attention, targeting individual learning gaps.
CDE High Impact Tutoring
National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University
EdResearch on High Impact Tutoring
11/07/2023. General
This brief provides an overview of available funding for high-impact tutoring programs beyond Covid-19 relief funding (ESSER).
Many streams of funding, on their own or braided together, can pay for high-impact tutoring in U.S. schools.
10/27/2023. General
As schools, districts, and states work to address the student needs following the pandemic, many turned to high-impact tutoring, a research-based approach to providing individualized instruction to students. In fact, thirty-seven percent of public schools reported providing “high-dosage” tutoring on a federal school pulse panel survey in December 2022. In addition, many states have implemented or are exploring policies to increase access to high-impact tutoring. This brief explores the tutoring policy landscape at the state level as of November 2023.
09/30/2023. Article
In the aftermath of COVID-19, learning losses are among the most devastating, persistent consequences of the pandemic. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds were disproportionately impacted, creating both a learning and inequality crisis. Studies from the California School Boards Association and University of Chicago hail high-impact tutoring as a key solution for both issues.
In Guilford County Schools, implementation of high-impact tutoring has produced impressive results. All student groups improved their test proficiency scores this year.
09/18/2023. Legislation
Provides $26.1 million in GEER funds to support the implementation of high-dosage tutoring programs in Ohio districts and schools. The tutoring programs will be offered by providers on the High-Quality Tutoring Provider (HQTP) Vendor Directory and funded through the Department. Tutoring programs will be offered at no direct cost to participating districts or schools. However, all participating districts and schools must commit to participation criteria that align to best practices for high-quality tutoring.
08/26/2023. Legislation
Updates this 2021 law to allow school districts to advance students who score in the “approaching” category on their third grade Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) ELA test and score in the 50th percentile on the third-grade reading screener test if they complete summer school or tutoring in fourth grade. Students who score in the “below basic” category must complete both summer school and tutoring in 4th grade in order to advance.
08/25/2023. Legislation
Provides $10 million in American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Relief Funds (ESSER III) to launch and scale high-quality, school day tutoring for secondary math that will mitigate long-term learning loss resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
08/21/2023. Article
“Michigan, by having their policy come out now, is certainly behind several states but ahead of probably at least half of the states, I’m sure,” said Kathy Bendheim, managing director at the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA), a group out of Stanford University that shares tutoring research and helps create evidence-based programs.
She said Michigan’s program incorporates “high-quality standards” in its policy but must ensure tutoring programs are actually implemented as designed.
“The urgency of the situation makes you want to do it for all kids immediately,” she said. “But what we have learned is that starting small — smaller — getting it right and building those real champions makes the expansion so much easier.”
08/15/2023. Article
As the main focus of Future Forward Ohio, high-dosage tutoring, which is characterized by an average of at least 90 minutes of tutoring per week, promises lasting academic improvements. Studies have shown that students consistently benefit from it, as evidenced by Stanford University's National Student Support Accelerator, which underscores its effectiveness, particularly for those lagging academically.
"Cignition's program aligns with what the research tells us are the most promising practices in high-impact tutoring, with consistent, effective tutors who develop strong relationships with students and provide engaging, personalized instruction," said Susanna Loeb, professor and director of the education policy initiative at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. "Moreover, recent studies provide good evidence that Cignition's program has been successful for the students that they reach, meaningfully improving their learning and performance on key assessments."
01/24/2023. Article
Rebuilding students’ self-esteem requires ongoing support from the same tutor, said Susanna Loeb, an education researcher at Stanford University. Those relationships, she said, allow students to take risks and work until they understand the material.
In the year since Cardona’s address, she said she’s seen real improvement in some district’s ability “to actually pull off harder, more intensive support for students.”
That’s partly due to her previous work at Brown University on the National Student Support Accelerator. The center summarizes important research about high-dosage tutoring — likely the inspiration, Loeb said, for Cardona’s prescription for “30 minutes per day, three days a week, with a well-trained tutor.”
10/26/2022. Article
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.’”
10/15/2022. Article
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.
09/26/2022. Article
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.
09/16/2022. Article
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.
09/07/2022. Article
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.
08/16/2022. Article
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.
07/08/2022. Article
“Our team at the National Student Support Accelerator is thrilled to contribute to this national effort to provide students with the learning experiences that they need to engage in school and to thrive. This effort to expand high-impact tutoring really is the best opportunity we have to meaningfully improve outcomes for students across the nation,” added Susanna Loeb, Director of the National Student Support Accelerator.
04/22/2021. Article
High-Impact tutoring — i.e., tutoring delivered three or more times a week by consistent, trained tutors using quality materials and data to inform instruction — is one of the most effective academic interventions, providing an average of more than four months of additional learning in elementary literacy and almost 10 months in high school math, according to research from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University (learn more here). The National Student Support Accelerator offers open-source Accelerator tools and resources to help ensure more equitable access to quality tutoring. These research-backed tools and supports are easy to use and downloadable, and are designed to make structuring, implementing and scaling high-quality, high-impact tutoring programs as straightforward as possible.