By Stephen Sawchuk — August 19, 2020
One-on-one tutoring is the original “personalized learning,” dating back centuries. Along with the Socratic seminar, it may be among the oldest pedagogies still in existence. And as it turns out, it is probably the single most powerful strategy for responding to learning loss.
Increasingly, top education researchers agree that tutoring programs for students who lost ground over the last six months should be a top priority for federal investment. There is potential, they say, for such a program to help ease unemployment. After all, the economic downturn means there’s a glut of talented college graduates and other degree holders who might be interested in tutoring part or full-time in exchange for a stipend or salary.
These advocates stress the realities of basic equity for the nation’s most underserved children. Tutoring, after all, is what advantaged parents routinely seek out for their children—and will continue to do as the pandemic continues. (In fact, some well-heeled parents are already putting together “learning pods”—essentially small tutoring groups—with other families.) Why should it be any different for other children?
Why is tutoring so effective?
The research on high-dosage tutoring—generally defined as one-on-one tutoring or tutoring in very small groups at least three times a week, or for about 50 hours over a semester—is robust, and it is convincing. On average, the effect sizes are among the largest of all interventions seen in education.
And tutoring seems to work for a range of subjects. Two recent meta-analyses looking specifically at tutoring within the context of struggling readers in the elementary grades and elementary math programs found evidence of success for both content areas.
Which is why any district that can afford to begin robust tutoring programs should, researchers say. “For the level of problems districts are likely to be seeing coming into their doors with the minimum of six months of learning at home, I think it would be malpractice to do anything less than tutoring,” said Robert Slavin, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education, who has studied the topic extensively.
Just why tutoring seems to be so effective is harder to pinpoint empirically. But the theory of action is clear: In such small groups, teachers can better customize teaching to the specific content gaps a student has missed or the prerequisite skills they need to practice. And it’s easier for a student to develop a relationship with a tutor they see at dedicated hours several times a week
“The magic of tutoring of course seems to be this individualized ability to both diagnose, and hover, in ways that just lead to real progress,” noted Emily Freitag, the CEO of Instruction Partners, a nonprofit working with districts in several states to develop COVID-19 instructional plans.
Plus, it boosts students’ confidence as they begin to make progress. “The lowest-performing kids tend to sit quietly in school and hope no one will notice them. With tutoring, there’s an adult who gets to know them and cares about them deeply and gives them loads of opportunity to let them show that they can succeed,” noted Slavin.
How much does tutoring cost?
The wrinkle is that tutoring comes with a high price tag, primarily in the form of hiring and training tutors, especially in a one-on-one setting. One study of a Chicago high-dosage math tutoring program found that it cost on the order of $3,800 a student over a school year, though economies of scale could potentially bring that figure down if it’s expanded.
Such is the strength of the research on tutoring that other countries are underwriting tutoring as a core strategy to put kids back on track.
In Britain, the Parliament has set aside 1 billion pounds (about $1.27 billion) for extra pupil services, of which ￡350 (about $442 million) will be specifically reserved for tutoring programs in primary and secondary schools. The funding will help schools procure tutoring at a reduced price, with the government giving a stamp of approval to those providers with evidence that their approach works. (A secondary tier will identify programs that lack effectiveness data but use features associated with better learning outcomes, said Robbie Coleman, the acting director of the National Tutoring Programme.)
The Netherlands also approved new funding for interventions, though it will be up to schools to decide whether to use the funding for tutoring or other pupil services.
Many U.S. researchers are pressing Congress to follow suit. So far, it has not approved funding beyond the CARES Act for specific interventions.
The AmeriCorps program, for example, has long supported tutoring among other types of community service, staffed by young volunteers who are paid a stipend. But its reach is limited by the annual federal budgeting process, and while there have been proposalsto expand it as part of a national pandemic response, so far none of them have advanced.
Among states, Maryland appears to be the only one to earmark some of its CARES funding for tutoring; officials there said $100 million would be allocated, but the state has not made available any additional details. A Tennessee summer tutoring program, privately funded by former Gov. Bill Haslam and his wife, was administered through the Boys and Girls Clubs using college students. Theoretically, districts could use some Title I funding for tutoring, though districts often have already allocated that money into other continuing costs like salaries for classroom aides.
Still, there are some ways to lower the price tag of tutoring. Paraprofessionals and paid volunteers appear to be generally as good as certified classroom teachers in providing tutoring, and they are much less costly to hire, according to several studies.
(One way to think about this apparent contradiction: It can take years to learn how to effectively teach a class of 25 or more students. But many people can be trained in a relatively short time to be a good one-on-one tutor.)
There is one catch in the research, though: Unpaid volunteers are generally much less effective tutors than paid ones.
How would tutoring work in a remote environment?
Far less is known, researchers acknowledge, about the best way to make tutoring translate into a remote-learning session.
Engagement is among the core challenges, both in terms of building a relationship with each student and keeping the tutoring interactive in the absence of traditional materials like white boards, or when circumstances dictate telephone tutoring rather than a video format, said Christine SySantos Levy, special projects coordinator for Johns Hopkins School of Education’s Center for Research and Reform. (She helped administer a pilot online tutoring program in eight Baltimore schools over the summer.)
“We want [tutors] to see themselves as a practitioner in both spaces,” said Stephanie Wu, the organization’s chief impact officer. “The skills are really different, and the content needs to be prepared differently.”
Putting It All Together
Consider cost-effectiveness.
One-on-one tutoring has the strongest evidence of effectiveness, but costs the most and reaches the fewest students. Some studies show that larger tutoring groups of two to four students, while less effective than one-to-one arrangements, still pay dividends for learning. At least one study on one-to-four afterschool tutoring found learning benefits for only Black students who participated, however.
Thus, this is a significant gray area in the literature. Districts will need to weigh their priorities and, potentially, test and modify their approaches. One idea is to begin tutoring with larger groups of students needing extra help—perhaps four at a time–and monitor carefully to see if their learning responds. If they don’t appear to be making progress, then it may be time to move them into one-on-one settings, suggested Slavin of Johns Hopkins University.
“I would keep careful track of how students are progressing,” he said. “A lot of kids will be successful at one-to-four [groups] but there may be kids who are not, and I would reserve one-to-one for those who are not.”