Search the NSSA Website
Use our Tutoring Information Hub to find materials that are relevant to your high-impact tutoring needs. You can also subscribe to our newsletter to learn more about our work!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 108
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.”
03/22/2024. Event
Two years have passed since the educational landscape embraced high-dosage tutoring as a pivotal strategy for enhancing K-12 student learning and achievement. This panel revisits the concept with fresh insights, assessing its long-term effects and the evolution of best practices in the wake of continued research and on-the-ground experiences. We'll delve into how high-dosage tutoring has been adapted and scaled across diverse educational settings, the challenges faced, and the successes achieved. Experts will share innovative approaches for integrating tutoring into the curriculum, leveraging technology to enhance accessibility, and evaluating the impact on both academic and socio-emotional student outcomes. Whether you're looking to refine your existing tutoring program or are curious about the latest developments in this dynamic field, this discussion will offer valuable perspectives on supporting student success through targeted instruction. Join us to explore the next chapter of high-dosage tutoring and its role in shaping future educational practices.
Speakers:
Alan Safran, Saga Education
Rahul Kalita, Tutored by Teachers
Susanna Loeb, Stanford University
Alejandro Gibes de Gac, Springboard Collaborative & Paloma
Moderator: Linda Jacobson, The 74
03/12/2024. Article
INCREASING ACCESS TO HIGH-IMPACT TUTORING
Over the past few years, finding consensus around the most effective strategies and interventions to address post-COVID learning recovery has largely been elusive. But there is widespread agreement that high-impact, or high-dosage, tutoring holds tremendous promise.
Ideally, programs include small groups of no more than three to four students. They meet at least three times a week with a professionally trained tutor, during school hours. In addition to the high-quality materials used in the sessions, students benefit from meeting with the same tutor every week.
03/08/2024. Research Study
High-impact tutoring has emerged as a primary school district investment for addressing learning loss that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. While existing research shows that high-impact tutoring is effective for accelerating student learning, this study examined the school-level facilitators and barriers to scaling high-impact tutoring. Situated in an urban traditional school district and an urban charter management organization, we collected survey and interview data from teachers and administrators to identify scaling challenges. Major barriers to scaling included time and space constraints, tutor supply and quality, updated data systems, and school level costs, while a key facilitator was teacher buy-in. We end the paper with recommendations for how districts can strategically grow their high-impact tutoring efforts.
02/20/2024. Event
Cignition, Inc. is proud to partner with educational leaders across the country to offer insight into effective high-impact tutoring implementation. In this edLeader Panel, attendees will hear from decision makers at the district and state levels on why they believe high-impact tutoring is so invaluable for academic intervention. They’ll also:
Learn how to integrate tutoring sessions into existing school schedules
Understand strategies for selecting students to participate in tutoring
Hear how differentiated instruction is the key to results that teachers and parents hope for
Review funding sources for high-impact tutoring
01/25/2024. General
How often does it happen that a national policy priority, robust research, and the aspirations of classroom teachers converge? On an issue with bipartisan support, no less? Not very often.
But tutoring is an exception. As many as 80 percent of school districts and charter school organizations have launched tutoring programs to help students rebound from the pandemic.
01/18/2024. Article
High-dosage tutoring, sometimes called “high-impact” or “high-intensity” tutoring, is one of the few school-based interventions with demonstrated significant positive effects on math and reading achievement. Yet high-dosage tutoring is a very specific form of tutoring that must meet specific criteria:
One-on-one or small-group sessions with no more than four students per tutor
Use of high-quality materials that align with classroom content
Three tutoring sessions per week—at minimum—each lasting at least 30 minutes
Sessions held during school hours
Students meeting with the same tutor each session
Professionally trained tutors who receive ongoing support and coaching
01/04/2024. Article
Susanna Loeb is named to the 2024 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, recognizing the 200 university-based scholars who had the biggest influence on educational practice and policy last year.
For the full list and to learn more about the rankings, visit The 2024 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.
12/22/2023. Article
High-dosage tutoring programs have expanded significantly, with nearly 40 percent of schools now using individual and small-group tutoring with trained teachers or tutors four or five days a week. This approach has been shown to boost student learning, but it can also be expensive. A new study by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University suggests virtual tutoring could be a less-costly option, if it remains as intensive and rigorous as in-person tutoring.
12/13/2023. Article
Thankfully, states and districts aren’t sitting on their hands in the face of learning loss. Supported by billions of dollars of federal funds, many have invested heavily in tutoring programs that promise to help struggling children overcome the challenges imposed by past school closures and virtual instruction. The question is whether those efforts work for enough students to justify their cost — and according to data generated by the National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford initiative devoted to studying the effects of tutoring, there is reason for hope.
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.
12/05/2023. Article
Stanford’s National Student Support Accelerator suggests various tutor trainings along with online pre-service trainings such as Saga Coach. The training level of tutors also impacts tutor payment with some models proposing payments of $20 per hour for non-professionals and payments of up to $50 per hour for teachers and professional tutors.
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.
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.
09/27/2023. Article
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s research arm, high-dose tutoring is the most effective—though often the most expensive.
The National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford University center that studies effective tutoring, finds that effective high-dose tutoring programs require:
Tutoring integrated into the school day to increase tutor-teacher coordination and avoid transportation or time problems for students.
Targeting students based on academic need rather than requiring parents to opt into services.
Budgeting services for at least three to five days a week for extended periods of time.
Differentiated tutoring based on particular student needs and skills.
Data-gathering and progress-monitoring, particularly when schools work with outside tutoring providers.
09/27/2023. Article
With research showing that far fewer students took advantage of online tutoring than districts expected, the outcomes-based model is one way to ensure districts use public funds wisely. “In education, we can pay for things a long time before we realize no children are participating in it,” Miller said.
09/22/2023. General
Districts across the nation use Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) to target appropriate supports for each student. High-impact tutoring is the most effective research-backed academic support – consistently demonstrating from six months to over two years of learning gains for students across grade levels and content areas in a single year of tutoring.
Districts that have chosen to integrate high-impact tutoring with MTSS are finding that embedding this highly effective support into the fabric of their schools improves student outcomes, reduces implementation challenges, improves instructional coherence, and streamlines operations.
08/31/2023. Article
The authors partnered with school districts, tutoring providers, and quarterback organizations that support implementation of high-impact tutoring across districts in the United States to learn from their efforts in implementing tutoring. This cross-district implementation study shares a snapshot of lessons learned about common barriers to implementing highly-effective programs and the ways that districts have overcome these barriers with success. Interviewees included administrators, teachers, tutors, and other program staff from nine school districts and one charter management organization, seven tutoring providers, and six quarterback organizations that support implementation across districts. One finding is that funding and belief in the potential of tutoring are two key facilitators for the implementation of high-impact tutoring. Moreover, some of the challenges identified are related to tutor recruitment and training, data use, the scheduling of tutoring during the school day, student attendance and school-level buy-in.
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.
06/21/2023. Article
We need your help to provide an open-access Tutor Training Resource Library and develop new tutor training materials!
Would you be interested in making your tutor training publicly accessible through NSSA’s website?
If so, please complete this Tutor Training Resource Library Interest Form. Sharing your training materials is a great way to build awareness of your tutoring program and contribute to the field. You can also indicate interest in setting up a call to discuss this project further through this form.