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12/07/2023. Article
Transformative change in education often begins with a powerful story. Increasingly, high-impact tutoring is that story, where students find both significant academic success and personal confidence in their abilities. Rhyne Richards—a 6th-grade student in Washington, DC.—met several times each week with a tutor, Ms. Burns, to overcome math challenges. Rhyne’s journey speaks volumes. “I get distracted a lot [in class],” Rhyne admitted. “But when I’m with Ms. Burns, I learn a lot; a lot more than I knew last year.” It’s a testament to the remarkable impact of intensive, one-on-one tutoring. “I’m proud of myself,” Rhyne continued. “Before, I didn’t really know math like I do now. But now I can do it myself. I want to be the smartest person in the world.” Rhyne’s regained confidence in math and optimism for the future epitomize the profound evidence for and influence of intensive, relationship-based, individualized instruction—it is a narrative we must tirelessly work to replicate and scale.
12/05/2023. General
This research report presents the results from the second year of a randomized controlled trial of an early elementary reading tutoring program that has been designed to be affordable at scale. During the 2021-22 school year, over eight hundred kindergarten students in a large Southeastern school district were randomly assigned to receive supplementary tutoring with the Chapter One program. The program continued during the 2022-23 school year, while the children attended first grade. The program embeds part-time tutors into the classroom to provide short bursts of instruction to individual students each week over the course of the school year. The consistent presence of the tutors allows them to build strong relationships with students and meet students’ individual needs at the moment they might most benefit from personalized instruction. The program focuses more time on students with the lowest literacy skills.
10/31/2023. Article
Intensive, high-dose tutoring can boost early reading skills, even in a virtual format, according to a new experimental study.
Researchers from the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University tracked the reading progress of about 2,000 K-2 students in a dozen Texas charter schools. Half of the students were randomly assigned to attend class normally, while half received intensive remote tutoring for part of the school day, in small groups, through the nonprofit group OnYourMark, which serves K-2 students in seven states.
07/12/2023. General
Many districts sought to provide students with high-impact tutoring in response to pandemic-induced learning needs. Some started earlier than others, and we aimed to learn from the experiences of the early adopters to help inform a smoother implementation among those beginning the process later. During the 2021-22 school year, we partnered with school districts, tutoring providers, and quarterback organizations that support implementation across districts to learn from their efforts in implementing tutoring.
05/31/2023. Article
Developing and staffing the kind of tutoring that research has shown is most effective—often referred to as high quality, or high-impact tutoring—is complex, time-consuming, and expensive. Tutors meet with students at least three times a week, in small groups or one-on-one. Work should be targeted to a specific subject and aligned to high-quality curriculum, and should develop strong tutor-tutee relationships.
“High-impact tutoring is not homework help. They’re not sporadically dropping in,” said Carly Robinson, a senior researcher at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education who works with the National Student Support Accelerator, a group promoting research-based tutoring programs.
05/18/2023. Article
“The truth is that there are a lot of scabbed knees and bruises in this work,” Borders, who oversees the state’s tutoring effort, said at a conference held last week at Stanford University about the future of tutoring. “Not going to sugar coat this, guys. It’s hard work.”
Early in the pandemic, experts identified high-dosage tutoring — the kind that’s offered multiple times per week, in small groups, with a consistent tutor — as a potentially successful strategy for helping students plug learning gaps. But more than two years into a national push to expand the reach of tutoring, many schools are still struggling with basics, like how to staff and schedule their programs.
04/27/2023. Article
Of all academic interventions, so-called “high-dosage” tutoring has shown the most evidence of helping students gain academic ground quickly.
Susanna Loeb, the founder and executive director of the National Student Support Accelerator, studies how schools can use and scale up intensive tutoring, which involves one-on-one situations or very small groups meeting at least 30 minutes, three or more times a week.
Loeb, who is also a professor and the director of the education policy initiative at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, spoke with Education Week about what goes into effective tutoring.
04/25/2023. Article
High-quality tutoring is one of the most effective educational interventions we have – but we need both humans and technology for it to work. In a standing-room-only session, GSE Professor Susanna Loeb, a faculty lead at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, spoke alongside school district superintendents on the value of high-impact tutoring. The most important factors in effective tutoring, she said, are (1) the tutor has data on specific areas where the student needs support, (2) the tutor has high-quality materials and training, and (3) there is a positive, trusting relationship between the tutor and student. New technologies, including AI, can make the first and second elements much easier – but they will never be able to replace human adults in the relational piece, which is crucial to student engagement and motivation.
04/13/2023. Article
Pearl, the leading research-based tutor management platform, announced today insights from its inaugural Community
03/27/2023. Article
With “proper supports, such as good materials and coaching, they can be excellent tutors,” said Stanford professor Susanna Loeb, who founded the National Student Support Accelerator to expand access to high-quality tutoring.
03/20/2023. Article
Are you a college or university leader looking to improve opportunities for your students?
Or maybe you are a district leader looking to partner with a college or university to provide tutoring for your students?
The National Student Support Accelerator’s High Impact Tutoring: Higher Education Institution Playbook supports higher education institutions in partnering with school districts to offer high-impact tutoring services.
03/15/2023. Article
“These results are big,” said Susanna Loeb, a Stanford professor of education who was a member of the research team and heads the National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford research organization that studies tutoring and released this study in February 2023. “What’s so exciting about this study is it shows that you can get a lot of the benefits of high impact tutoring – relationship-based, individualized instruction with really strong instructional materials – at a cost that is doable for most districts in the long run.”
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.”
12/15/2022. Article
“Online tutoring doesn’t have to mean after-school tutoring; it doesn’t have to mean opt-in tutoring,” said Susanna Loeb, the director of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, which has produced research on effective tutoring practices. “It really can be very similar [to in-person tutoring].”
10/08/2022. Article
In-school tutoring is not a silver bullet. But it may help students and schools reduce some pandemic-related slides in achievement.
10/03/2022. Article
Sonnemann said Australia should look to the US in expanding research in tutoring, pointing to Brown University using targeted studies with government districts to examine the roll-out of small-group tuition programs and how well they help students catch up.
She said given the size of NSW’s COVID-19 tutoring initiative, it was vital parents and schools know how well it was working and governments should consider rolling out long-term, systematic catch-up tuition.
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.
06/29/2022. Article
The other approach pairs students with one tutor for multiple virtual sessions each week. It’s similar to the kind of “high-dosage” help that’s been shown to deliver strong results in person.
The small handful of studies that have looked at virtual tutoring during the pandemic saw promising results from this variety. But offerings vary, so it’s tough to say how many students are getting that kind, said Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education at Brown University who’s studying tutoring initiatives.
06/14/2022. Article
Yes! We have much work to do to ensure high-impact tutoring is embedded in schools for all students for the long term, but we see places where it is happening. Here are three examples of high-impact tutoring programs that have been serving students for over a decade before the pandemic and continue to grow.
06/13/2022. Article
Last week, the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading held a national conversation about high-dosage tutoring, an evidence-based intervention for learning loss. On the panel — along with leaders from national organizations like ExcelinEd and The Education Trust — was John-Paul Smith, the executive director of the NC Education Corps, talking about state strategies to advance equitable learning recovery.
04/27/2022. Article
The US government has directed millions of dollars to K–12 education with the specific goal of getting students back on grade level after the instructional time lost during the pandemic. High-impact tutoring would be an effective use of that money.
03/28/2022. Article
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Alan Safran is founder of Saga Education, nonprofit serving low income students through a unique approach to tutoring.
Kelly Gallagher-Mackay is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Laurier University. She believes that intentional and intensive school-embedded tutoring is key to mitigating learning impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.
03/19/2022. Article
The Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois State Board of Education are supporting a statewide tutoring initiative to address the learning needs of students. The Illinois Tutoring Initiative is based on High-Impact Tutoring Practices grounded in research from the National Student Support Accelerator.
03/03/2022. Article
Tutoring programs that have these characteristics make the greatest difference, according to research from the National Student Support Accelerator at Brown University.
A few key characteristics define the type of tutoring the program will provide. The tutors get formal training, and they meet with the same students over time to develop trust. Students spend at least three sessions a week with the tutors, on content that aligns with their classes.
Tutoring programs that have these characteristics make the greatest difference, according to research from the National Student Support Accelerator at Brown University.