Opinion
Student Achievement Opinion

Learning Recovery: The Research on Tutoring, Extended School Year, and Other Strategies

The evidence points most strongly to the value of high-dosage tutoring, but other approaches also have merit
By Heather C. Hill — April 28, 2021 5 min read
A tutor welcomes a student to a workstation
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Editor’s Note: This is part of a continuing series on the practical takeaways from research.

Districts will soon start receiving about $123 billion set aside for schools in the American Rescue Plan. This legislation provides money to help districts bring back students during (what I hope is) the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic. The funds can also purchase programs that meet the needs of the hardest-hit students, hire additional educators to address learning loss, and underwrite summer, after-school, and extended-day and -year learning programs. With so many choices, how should schools spend this money in ways that most boost student outcomes?

To answer this question, I reviewed syntheses of research that look at ways to catch students up academically. Overall, high-dosage tutoring programs had the best track record. Other promising possibilities include extended learning time and highly structured home summer-reading programs for elementary students. Where possible, I compare program outcomes by using the average impact of high-dosage-tutoring programs as a benchmark. While such comparisons are imperfect, they give educators a rough sense for how to prioritize programs with the same aims.

If districts are particularly targeting struggling students and can find the means to do high-dosage tutoring well, the research suggests that is the top choice. To qualify as high dosage, the program must provide each student roughly 75 minutes per week of small-group or individual instruction over a 36-week period. Low-dosage tutoring programs, on the other hand, do not on average show positive impacts.

The success of tutoring makes sense—tutors can tailor material specifically to student needs and pace material to match student progress. Many tutoring programs operate during the school day, with certified teachers pulling students out of their regular classroom for 1-to-1 or small-group instruction. Reviews of the literature show that after-school programs that feature tutoring can likewise improve outcomes in English/language arts.

Another approach to regaining lost learning is an extended school year. While tutoring may be directed just to some students, an extended school year is intended to move all students closer to where they would have been without the pandemic.

Highly structured home-based reading programs over the summer appear as effective on average as summer school in improving elementary-grade reading outcomes.

Several sources of evidence point to a longer school year as promising. First, economists have shown a relationship between the number of instructional days and student performance: When schools gain instructional days as a result of fewer snow days or changes in state testing windows, standardized-test scores improve. Second, policies and programs that add days to the school calendar are often (though not always) positively associated with improved student outcomes. In some cases, these programs can also accelerate the learning of students with lower levels of prior knowledge or who come from low-income or other historically marginalized communities.

Still, the extension has to be significant. A back-of-the-envelope estimate based on a study by Benjamin Hansen suggests that adding between two to six weeks of instruction would be needed to achieve the same effects as 36 weeks of high-dosage tutoring per year per student. In line with this estimate, successful programs extending the school year added between two and six weeks of instruction to the calendar.

Districts might also think about an extended school day. However, the evidence as a whole provides only weak support for extended days as a means of academic catch-up. It may be that how the time is used accounts for most of the difference. For instance, researcher Matt Kraft described how the Match Charter Public High School in Boston used a two-hour extension of the school day to incorporate individual tutoring; ELA test scores rose similarly to the effects seen in the average high-dosage-tutoring program, and math scores rose among the lowest-performing students.

The recovery plan specifically sets aside funds for summer school or other summer experiences for children. Several scholars have examined the body of literature on summer school and find that summer school programs that include reading and math work boost those skills, though the effects are roughly just a half to a third the size of those produced by the average high-dosage tutoring program.

Critics point out that academically focused summer schools may have a downside, depriving students of other kinds of summer benefits, like those gained in summer camp, informal care, or neighborhood settings. There, students may develop self-regulation and self-efficacy, enhance their creativity, or explore interests like art or engineering. Summer school may also be a relatively inefficient way of recovering lost learning because the material and pedagogical methods used in summer settings may not align well with students’ school year classroom experiences.

Perhaps surprisingly, highly structured home-based reading programs over the summer appear as effective on average as summer school in improving elementary-grade reading outcomes. One review of the literature also suggests that these home-based programs may be particularly effective for low-income children. Such programs provide students books or other texts to read, and many programs encourage reading the materials with family members. Particularly effective programs, like READS, also match texts with student interests and reading levels as well as involve classroom teachers in the program’s rollout and conclusion.

See Also

BRIC ARCHIVE
Getty

After-school programs are also popular for improving achievement. Unfortunately, after-school programs without tutoring have shown on average either small or no effects on student academic outcomes. That said, after-school programs with strong youth-staff relationships and an explicit focus on building social-emotional skills may help students build those skills and develop a more positive attitude toward school. Like many summertime activities, they can be valuable, but they don’t seem very good at helping students acquire academic skills they are missing.

With the exception of extended-day and after-school programs without tutoring, all the options above provide a pathway to recovering at least some of the academic learning lost to the pandemic. Districts choosing among them will want to compare costs and prospective benefits in order to spend their federal recovery money wisely.

Districts will also want to pay close attention to the implementation of the program(s) they choose. Effect sizes produced in academic studies are often not reproduced in the real world. I’ll write more about that in a forthcoming essay.

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Reading & Literacy Webinar
(Re)Focus on Dyslexia: Moving Beyond Diagnosis & Toward Transformation
Move beyond dyslexia diagnoses & focus on effective literacy instruction for ALL students. Join us to learn research-based strategies that benefit learners in PreK-8.
Content provided by EPS Learning
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Teaching Webinar
Cohesive Instruction, Connected Schools: Scale Excellence District-Wide with the Right Technology
Ensure all students receive high-quality instruction with a cohesive educational framework. Learn how to empower teachers and leverage technology.
Content provided by Instructure
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School Climate & Safety Webinar
How to Use Data to Combat Bullying and Enhance School Safety
Join our webinar to learn how data can help identify bullying, implement effective interventions, & foster student well-being.
Content provided by Panorama Education

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Student Achievement Spotlight Spotlight on High-Impact Tutoring
This Spotlight will help you learn what makes tutoring effective, identify how to make tutoring financially sustainable, and more.


Student Achievement What the Research Says Socioeconomic Status Matters in Student Achievement—But It’s Not Everything
Data suggests that a significant portion of the achievement gap could be tied to socioeconomic status.
5 min read
Illustration of a large brick wall with graduation cap and books on top of the wall and two silhouetted males sitting and standing at the base of wall and looking up.
Gina Tomko/Education Week + Canva
Student Achievement Opinion Should Schools Adopt Equitable Grading Practices? A Teacher Voices His Concerns
Responsible grading needs to reflect more than just content mastery, argues a veteran educator.
5 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Student Achievement Some Bright Spots in Students' Learning Recovery, But Still a Long Way to Go
Students are now learning as much each year as they did before the pandemic. But they're starting from farther behind.
2 min read
Diverse group of middle school students working on laptops in a classroom setting.
iStock/Getty