Foundations Get Behind Tutoring as a Remedy for COVID-Era Learning Disruption

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Ask any parent who has enlisted help for their struggling student: tutoring works. One-on-one academic support can help a clumsy writer polish her essay skills, or a math-phobic teen grasp linear regression. 

But despite consensus on tutoring’s effectiveness among parents and education experts alike, it’s a resource used primarily by families who can afford to pay for it. Private tutoring in the U.S. is a $47 billion industry—a sum that has likely shot even higher since the start of the pandemic. Now, Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform aims to broaden tutoring’s reach to include all K-12 students, whether they can afford it or not. 

The Annenberg Institute’s new National Student Support Accelerator is the brainchild of a group of education experts and philanthropies, and backed by some of the nation’s largest foundations—Gates and Walton. While the accelerator’s vision for universal access carries a price tag that would require a major investment of public funds, the initiative seeks to provide research and tools that will help government and educational institutions bring tutoring to scale.

High-impact tutoring

The project was created by education leaders to promote “high-impact tutoring” to help reverse learning loss caused by the pandemic. High-impact tutoring (also called high-dosage tutoring) is defined by the initiative as “a form of one-on-one or small group teaching that leads to substantial learning gains by supplementing (not replacing) students’ classroom experiences.” To be effective, experts agree the tutoring should be conducted several times a week over a sustained period of time. The new program’s vision is to give all K-12 students access to high-impact tutoring to boost their academic success. 

The project was launched by a diverse group of over 20 education leaders, including experts and philanthropists. The National Student Support Accelerator’s leadership team is impressive, and includes philanthropies like the Walton Family Foundation and the Southern Education Foundation, as well as education leaders from major colleges and universities. The initiative is funded by Walton, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Zoom. The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation has also provided funding for several school districts that will be project test sites, and has committed to additional funding next year, according to the program’s leadership.

The Walton Family Foundation is probably best known for supporting charter schools and school choice, but the National Student Support Accelerator’s mission aligns with another key foundation priority: student success. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a major supporter of education in the U.S., and puts particular emphasis on programs that help prepare students for college, and on innovation to improve student outcomes. The Tulsa-based Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation aims much of its philanthropic efforts at local initiatives and projects in Israel, but is also a strong supporter of college readiness and education equity. 

The National Student Support Accelerator is so new that it is still building out its website, but it has already established 10 pilot sites around the country. The sites will provide both hands-on tutoring and the opportunity to study and refine tutoring methods.

Tutoring done well

Susanna Loeb, National Student Support Accelerator’s director, says one of the project’s key goals is to create tools that other organizations and school systems can use, including guidelines for training tutors, selecting curriculum and analyzing outcomes. “We want to leverage investment going into tutoring to make sure it is done well,” she said. “As researchers, we can evaluate what’s working, improve methods and build tools, and provide information for school districts and parents so they’ll know which approaches work best.”

Another goal, according to Loeb, is to figure out the best way to scale high-impact tutoring without diminishing its effectiveness. “It’s hard to scale programs and do it well, and it takes a lot of support,” she said. “I think the National Student Support Accelerator will play an important role in that effort.”  

“It would be malpractice to do anything less”

Like many education experts today, Loeb believes that high-impact tutoring could be a game changer when it comes to improving academic outcomes for all students. As a recent Annenberg Institute report points out, “The average effect of tutoring programs on student achievement is larger than the effects found in approximately 85% of studies evaluating education interventions and equivalent to moving a student at the 35th percentile of the achievement distribution to the 50th.” 

According to Johns Hopkins Professor Robert Slavin, who directs the Center for Research and Reform in Education, “There is no intervention known that has an impact larger than that of tutoring.” 

Like the team that created the National Student Support Accelerator, Slavin believes tutoring is the best way to help students catch up after months out of the classroom. As he told Education Week: “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.” 

Many education experts say that such interventions will be critical. While it’s too early to gauge the long-term academic consequences of COVID-19, recent analysis by McKinsey & Company found that school closures had the greatest negative impact on low-income students and Black and Hispanic students, which will widen the existing achievement gap. 

More than higher grades

There is evidence that tutoring provides benefits that may be even more important than academic achievement. “We hear lots of stories about how much of a difference tutoring can make in kids’ lives,” said Susanna Loeb. A representative of an organization that provides tutors told her recently, for example, that many students are showing up for tutoring but not for regular classes. 

“I think that’s because tutoring provides a close personal relationship with a caring adult,” Loeb said. “The tutor doesn’t just help a child with math, but provides important social and emotional learning, too. Research shows that kids who study with a tutor are more likely to stay in school. Tutoring provides kids another important point of contact and engagement.”

A tutoring Marshall Plan

For all its advantages, high-impact tutoring has a major drawback: It’s wildly expensive. 

Giving all students access to high-impact tutoring would help level the education playing field, but to build a comprehensive and sustainable program would take a major investment on the part of the government. Loeb and other tutoring advocates are hoping that the incoming president may be considering such an investment: Several proposals for comprehensive tutoring programs were submitted to the Biden transition team. 

Slavin wrote an open letter to the President-elect Joe Biden, proposing a “Tutoring Marshall Plan to Heal Our Students.”  

In the letter, Slavin wrote, “The plan we are proposing is a bit like the Marshall Plan after World War II, which provided substantial funding to Western European nations devastated by the war. The idea was to put these countries on their feet quickly and effectively so that within a brief period of years, they could support themselves. In a similar fashion, a Tutoring Marshall Plan would provide intensive funding to enable Title I schools nationwide to substantially advance the achievement of their students who suffered mightily from COVID-19 school closures and related trauma.” Slavin’s plan offers the additional advantage of providing employment for 300,000 recent college graduates. 

Loeb hopes that high-impact tutoring becomes a Biden Administration education priority, and that the National Student Success Accelerator will play a role in the process. This is the lofty goal of many philanthropic efforts, especially around K-12 education—that their pilot projects and exploratory research will shape the mainstream through public sector adoption. In the meantime, with the help of philanthropists like Walton and Gates, Loeb is continuing to plan pilot sites, conduct research and develop tools to improve academic outcomes—one student at a time.