The rise, fall — and possible future — of high-dosage tutoring
Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. In 2020, a wonky but buzzy new phrase entered the common educational lexicon: “high-dosage tutoring.” Academics, policymakers, and journalists, myself included , began describing the idea as a potential solution to the moment’s…
High-dosage tutoring gained prominence during the 2020 learning loss crisis, with experts and policymakers touting it as a potential solution. Research suggested that students could improve to the 65th percentile of performance with regular tutoring. However, the path to implementing high-dosage tutoring was fraught with challenges.
Initially, funding seemed to be the main barrier, but federal stimulus funds alleviated this concern. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona endorsed tutoring, recommending at least 30 minutes per day, three times a week. Yet, many third-party companies stepped in, branding themselves as high-dosage providers, but often offering remote homework help instead of the in-person, regular tutoring envisioned.
In-house tutoring also faced issues, with Nashville schools relying on volunteers and teachers, but finding and training qualified tutors proved difficult. Denver's experience with external companies mirrored these challenges, with one struggling to find qualified tutors and the other relying on virtual tutoring, which led to missed sessions.
The pandemic and a tight labor market further complicated matters, as schools struggled to engage tutors. Additionally, the $190 billion in federal funds for schools was quickly depleted, competing with other needs. The underlying research on tutoring showed that larger programs produced smaller gains, suggesting the initial research was overly optimistic.
Nashville's tutoring program improved reading scores but showed no significant improvement in math. A study by the University of Chicago Education Lab echoed these findings, describing both encouraging and sobering results. These findings led to a post-mortem of the tutoring initiative, with some questioning if the funds were wasted.
Critics argue that high-dosage tutoring, despite its name, often delivered less dosage due to cost-cutting, resulting in modest learning gains. While the initiative had some success, policy experts caution that casting it aside as a failure would be premature. They emphasize the importance of learning from both the setbacks and successes of high-dosage tutoring.
Written by urgent.news from Chalkbeat's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
