\n<\/p>\n
The prescription was everywhere as the full extent of academic damage wrought by the pandemic first became clear: Set up tutoring programs to catch students up.<\/p>\n
The same advice echoed from policy papers, think tanks, and the federal government, which put hundreds of billions into school recovery dollars. Experts and researchers heralded tutoring as an evidence-backed solution for addressing significant academic gaps, and some school systems saw early successes.<\/p>\n
Now, though, several evaluations of pandemic-era tutoring programs are showing smaller effects on student progress than expected\u2014or revealing that didn\u2019t improve outcomes at all.<\/p>\n
The most recent of these, from researchers at Stanford University\u2019s SCALE Initiative, examined math and reading tutoring programs in a large, urban district during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. Neither led to overall gains in academic achievement.<\/p>\n
But when researchers dug deeper into the data, they identified implementation problems that could be driving these null effects.<\/p>\n
The findings add to a growing body of evidence around tutoring in a post-COVID landscape that suggests the effectiveness of a program hinges on the nitty-gritty details of how it is run\u2014how often students meet with their tutors, for instance, or whether lessons are tailored to their specific needs.<\/p>\n
Studying these implementation details could help school systems build more effective tutoring initiatives in the long run, said Elizabeth Huffaker, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Florida, and the lead author on the SCALE paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of potential upside to findings like this, even though we wish that students were seeing more across-the-board gains as soon as possible,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The tutoring programs that districts stood up over the past five years are still in relatively early stages, said Matthew Kraft, a professor of education and economics at Brown University who has studied tutoring\u2019s effectiveness. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople should be asking the question, \u2018Should we spend money on tutoring?\u2019 That\u2019s a totally fair question,\u201d he said. But findings that some pandemic-era tutoring programs aren\u2019t effective right now doesn\u2019t preclude them becoming more successful as districts refine and retool implementation, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t gotten there,\u201d said Kraft. \u201cWe are tinkering toward that possible equilibrium. I think it would be a real loss in incremental innovation and improvement if we abandon that possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
From another vantage point, though, the problem is the same one that has continually plagued other major efforts to boost achievement, from class-size reduction to comprehensive school reform models to curriculum reform: scaling. <\/p>\n
In practice, it\u2019s often hard for schools to replicate the precise conditions that research on tutoring suggests can move the needle. Those include students learning from tutors one-on-one or in very small groups at least three times a week for about 50 hours of instruction over the course of a semester. <\/p>\n
In a 2024 meta-analysis, Kraft and researchers Beth Schueler and Grace Falken examined 265 randomized controlled trials of tutoring. On average, these studies showed that tutoring had a large, positive effect on student achievement.<\/p>\n
But when they reran the numbers looking only at the studies that tested large-scale tutoring programs in the United States, and measured students\u2019 outcomes via standardized tests, the effect size shrank by about a half to two-thirds, with larger tutoring programs having smaller effect sizes.<\/p>\n
In part, that\u2019s because larger programs tend to have higher student-tutor ratios and less time spent in tutoring than smaller programs, Kraft said. It\u2019s also possible, he said, that \u201cthe quality of delivery and implementation starts to slip when programs are scaling.\u201d <\/p>\n
It\u2019s easier to find 10 strong tutors, in other words, than 100.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019re learning from a really unbelievable wealth of rigorous studies, including the new study by SCALE, is a core insight in education,\u201d Kraft said. \u201cImplementation always trumps the base design of an educational intervention. You have to do something well for it to work.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SCALE study examined an early literacy tutoring program with 270 kindergartners and 1st graders, and an early numeracy program that served about 1,000 kindergartners. Paraprofessionals served as tutors in both programs.<\/p>\n
Neither group of students received as much tutoring as the programs suggested. Students in the reading program, on average, went through about 30% of the recommended sessions, while students in the math program went through about 36% of their lessons.<\/p>\n
In part, this was due to school testing schedules, said Huffaker. Tutoring couldn\u2019t start until students were evaluated with initial assessments, which delayed the beginning of the program to November. And within the math program, almost half of the students who were supposed to receive tutoring never got it\u2014administrators didn\u2019t tell classroom teachers that those students were supposed to participate in the study.<\/p>\n
But because the tutoring program was district-wide, the researchers were able to take advantage of differences in implementation in different schools. They found that when students received at least half of the sessions they were supposed to in the math program, achievement started to grow, and the effect got larger the more of the program that students attended.<\/p>\n
The result delivers a strikingly simple insight, but one that could explain why some large-scale programs are found ineffective: \u201cThe core idea and promise of tutoring is showing up, but only if students are receiving the tutoring,\u201d Huffaker said.<\/p>\n
In reading, the researchers found different patterns. Even when students completed more of the tutoring sessions, they didn\u2019t see gains, on average.<\/p>\n
Instead, lower-achieving students saw some growth compared to a control group, while students who started at a higher baseline didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The literacy program featured evidence-based instruction, but every student started at the same place, with very beginning skills in phonemic awareness\u2014the ability to recognize and manipulate sounds. It\u2019s likely, Huffaker said, that most students didn\u2019t reach enough material to grow much beyond where they started.<\/p>\n
The math program, by contrast, allowed for more individualized instruction. \u201cThere was less of a requirement to do every lesson in order, and more flexibility to skip around,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Together, the findings suggest the importance of tailoring tutoring to student needs, and making sure they have enough time with tutors to make progress, Huffaker said.<\/p>\n
Through interviews with school leaders, the researchers learned that campuses where students progressed through more of the tutoring program and were more successful had prioritized running the program effectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey instituted dedicated time every single day for the paraprofessional and the teacher to coordinate about instruction, and to make sure this is actually happening,\u201d Huffaker said.<\/p>\n
Leaders need to allot time and effort to this kind of collaboration, she added, especially if the programs depend on people who already wear a lot of hats in the school. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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