Tutoring Could Change Everything

Starting in the 1990s, futurists and technology fans began to say, “The Internet changes everything.” And eventually, it did. The Internet has certainly changed education, although it is unclear whether these changes have improved educational effectiveness.

Unlike the Internet, tutoring has been around since hunters and gatherers taught their children to hunt and gather. Yet ancient as it is, making one-to-one or small group tutoring widely available in Title I schools could have profound impacts on the most nettlesome problems of education.

            If the National Tutoring Corps proposal I’ve been discussing in recent blogs (here , here, and here) is widely implemented and successful, it could have both obvious and not-so-obvious impacts on many critical aspects of educational policy and practice. In this blog, I’ll discuss these revolutionary and far-reaching impacts.

Direct and Most Likely Impacts

Struggling Students

            Most obviously, if the National Tutoring Corps is successful, it will be because it has had an important positive impact on the achievement of students who are struggling in reading and/or mathematics. At 100,000 tutors, we expect as many as four million low-achieving students in Title I schools will benefit, about 10% of all U.S. students in grades 1-9, but, say, 50% of the students in the lowest 20% of their grades.

Title I

            In a December 20 tweet, former Houston superintendent Terry Grier suggested: “Schools should utilize all or most of their Title I money to implement tutoring programs…to help K-2 students catch up on lost literacy skills.”

            I’d agree, except that I’d include later grades and math as well as reading if there is sufficient funding. The purpose of Title I is to accelerate the achievement of low-achieving, disadvantaged students. If schools were experienced with implementing proven tutoring programs, and knew them from their own experience to be effective and feasible, why would such programs not become the main focus of Title I funding, as Grier suggests?

Special Education

            Students with specific learning disabilities and other “high-incidence” disabilities (about half of all students in special education) are likely to benefit from structured tutoring in reading or math. If we had proven, reliable, replicable tutoring models, with which many schools will have had experience, then schools might be able to greatly reduce the need for special education for students whose only problem is difficulty in learning reading or mathematics. For students already in special education, their special education teachers may adopt proven tutoring methods themselves, and may enable students with specific learning disabilities to succeed in reading and math, and hopefully to exit special education.

Increasing the Effectiveness of Other Tutoring and Supportive Services

            Schools already have various tutoring programs, including volunteer programs. In schools involved in the National Tutoring Corps, we recommend that tutoring by paid, well-trained tutors go to the lowest achievers in each grade. If schools also have other tutoring resources, they should be concentrated on students who are below grade level, but not struggling as much as the lowest achievers. These additional tutors might use the proven effective programs provided by the National Tutoring Corps, offering a consistent and effective approach to all students who need tutoring. The same might apply to other supportive services offered by the school.

Less Obvious But Critical Impacts

A Model for Evidence-to-Practice

            The success of evidence-based tutoring could contribute to the growth of evidence-based reform more broadly. If the National Tutoring Corps is seen to be effective because of its use of already-proven instructional approaches, this same idea could be used in every part of education in which robust evidence exists. For example, education leaders might reason that if use of evidence-based tutoring approaches had a big effect on students struggling in reading and math, perhaps similar outcomes could be achieved in algebra, or creative writing, or science, or programs for English learners.

Increasing the Amount and Quality of Development and Research on Replicable Solutions to Key Problems in Education

            If the widespread application of proven tutoring models broadly improves student outcomes, then it seems likely that government, private foundations, and perhaps creators of educational materials and software might invest far more in development and research than they do now, to discover new, more effective educational programs.

Reductions in Achievement Gaps

            If it were widely accepted that there were proven and practical means of significantly improving the achievement of low achievers, then there is no excuse for allowing achievement gaps to continue. Any student performing below the mean could be given proven tutoring and should gain in achievement, reducing gaps between low and high achievers.

Improvements in Behavior and Attendance

            Many of the students who engage in disruptive behavior are those who struggle academically, and therefore see little value in appropriate behavior. The same is true of students who skip school. Tutoring may help prevent behavior and attendance problems, not just by increasing the achievement of struggling students, but also by giving them caring, personalized teaching with a tutor who forms positive relationships with them and encourages attendance and good behavior.

Enhancing the Learning Environment for Students Who Do Not Need Tutoring

            It is likely that a highly successful tutoring initiative for struggling students could enhance the learning environment for the schoolmates of these students who do not need tutoring. This would happen if the tutored students were better behaved and more at peace with themselves, and if teachers did not have to struggle to accommodate a great deal of diversity in achievement levels within each class.

            Of course, all of these predictions depend on Congress funding a national tutoring plan based on the use of proven programs, and on implementation at scale actually producing the positive impacts that they have so often shown in research. But I hope these predictions will help policy makers and educational leaders realize the potential positive impacts a tutoring initiative could have, and then do what they can to make sure that the tutoring programs are effectively implemented and produce their desired impact. Then, and only then, will tutoring truly change everything.

Clarification:

Last week’s blog, on the affordability of tutoring, stated that a study of Saga Math, in which there was a per-pupil cost of $3,600, was intended as a demonstration, and was not intended to be broadly replicable.  However, all I meant to say is that Saga was never intended to be replicated AT THAT PRICE PER STUDENT.  In fact, a much lower-cost version of Saga Math is currently being replicated.  I apologize if I caused any confusion.

Photo credit: Deeper Learning 4 All, (CC BY-NC 4.0)

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org. 

The Case for Optimism

In the July 16 New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an article with a provocative title: “We Interrupt This Gloom to Offer…Hope.”

Kristof’s basic point is that things have gotten so awful in the U.S. that, in response, with any luck, we could soon be able to make progress on many issues that we could never make in normal times. He gives the example of the Great Depression, which made possible Social Security, rural electrification, and much more. And the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which led to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Civil Rights Act.

Could the crises we are going through right now have even more profound and long-lasting consequences? The Covid-19 pandemic is exposing the lack of preparedness and the profound inequities in our health systems that everyone knew about, but that our political systems could not fix. The Black Lives Matter movement is not new, but George Floyd’s killing and many other outrages caught on video are fueling substantial changes in attitudes among people of all races, making genuine progress possible. The shockingly unequal impacts of both Covid itself and its economic impacts are tearing away complacency about the different lives that are possible for rich and poor. The attacks by federal troops on peaceful demonstrators in Washington and Portland are likely to drive Americans to get back to the core principles in our Constitution, ones we too often take for granted. When this is all over, how can we just return to the way things were?

What is happening in education is appalling. Our inept response to the Covid pandemic makes it literally murder to open schools in many parts of the country. Some districts are already announcing that they will not open until January. With schools closed, or only partially open, students will be expected to learn remote, online lessons, which author Doug Lemov aptly describes as “like teaching through a keyhole.”

The statistics say that a tenth or a quarter or a half of students, depending on where they are, are not logging into online learning even once. For disadvantaged students and students in rural areas, this is due in part to a lack of access to equipment or broadband, and school districts are collectively spending billions to increase access to computers. But talk to just about any teacher or parent or student, including the most conscientious students with the best technology and the most supportive parents. They are barely going through the motions. The utter failure of online education in this crisis is a crisis in itself.

The ultimate result of the school closures and the apparent implosion of online teaching is that when schools do open, students will have fallen far behind. Gaps between middle class and disadvantaged students, awful in the best of times, will grow even larger.

So how can I possibly be optimistic?

There are several things that I believe are highly likely to occur in the coming months in our country. First, once students are back in school, we will find out how far behind they have fallen, and we will have to declare an educational emergency, with adequate funding to match the seriousness of the problems. Then the following will have to happen.

1. Using federal money, states and districts will contract with local agencies to hire an army of tutors to work individually or in small groups with struggling students, especially in elementary reading and mathematics, where there are many proven programs ready to go. Frankly, this is no longer optional. There is nothing nearly as effective as one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring. Nothing else can be put in place as quickly with as high a likelihood of working. As I’ve reported in previous blogs, England and the Netherlands have already announced national tutoring programs to combat the achievement gaps being caused by school closures. My own state, Maryland, has recently announced a $100 million program to provide tutoring statewide. Millions of recent college graduates will be without jobs in the recession that is certain to come. The best of them will be ideal candidates to serve as tutors.
2. America is paying a heavy price for ignoring its scientists, and science itself. Although there has been rapid growth in the evidence base and in the availability of proven programs, educational research and proven programs are still paid little attention in school policies and practices. In the education crisis we face, perhaps this will change. Might it be possible that schools could receive incentive funding to enable them to adopt proven programs known to make substantial differences in learning from Pre-K to 12^th grade and beyond? In normal times, people can ignore evidence about what works in reading or mathematics or science or social-emotional learning. But these are not normal times. No school should be forced to use any particular program, but government can use targeted funding and encouragement to enable schools to select and effectively implement programs of their choice.
3. In emergencies, government often accelerates funding for research and development to quickly find solutions for pressing national problems. This is happening now as labs nationwide are racing to develop Covid vaccines and cures, for example. As we declare an education emergency, we should be investing in research and development to respond to high-priority needs. For example, there are several proven programs for elementary students struggling in reading or mathematics. Yet we have few if any proven tutoring programs for middle or high schools. Middle school tutoring methods have been proven effective in England, so we know this can work, but we need to adapt and evaluate English models for the U.S., or evaluate existing U.S. programs that are promising but unevaluated, or develop new models for the U.S. If we are wise, we will do all three of these things. In the education emergency we face, it is not the time to fiddle around the edges. It is time to use our national innovative capacity to identify and solve big problems.

If America does declare a national education emergency, if it does mobilize an army of tutors using proven programs, if it invests in creating and evaluating new, ever more effective programs to solve educational problems and incentivizes schools to use them, an amazing thing will happen. In addition to solving our immediate problems, we will have learned how to make our schools much more effective, even in normal times.

Yes, things will someday get back to normal. But if we do the right things to solve our crises, we will not just be returning to normal. We will be returning to better. Maybe a lot better.

This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org. 

Large-Scale Tutoring in England: Countering Effects of School Closures

The government of England recently announced an investment of £1 billion to provide tutoring and other services to help the many students whose educational progress has been interrupted by Covid-19 school closures. This is the equivalent of $1.24 billion, and adjusting for the difference in populations, it is like a U.S. investment of $7.44 billion, even larger than the equivalent of the similar Dutch investment recently announced.

Both England and the Netherlands have Covid-19 disease and death rates like those of the U.S., and all three countries are unsure of when schools might open in the fall, and whether they will open fully or partially when they do. All three countries have made extensive use of online learning to help students keep up with core content. However, participation rates in online learning have been low, especially for disadvantaged students, who often lack access to equipment and assistance at home. For this reason, education leaders in all of these countries are very concerned that academic achievement will be greatly harmed, and that gaps between middle class and disadvantaged students will grow. The difference is that Dutch and English schools are taking resolute action to remedy this problem, primarily by providing one-to-one and one-to-small group tutoring nationwide. The U.S. has not yet done this, except for an initiative in Tennessee.

The English initiative has two distinct parts. £650 million will go directly to schools, with an expectation that they will spend most of it on one-to-four tutoring to students who most need it. The schools will mostly use the money to hire and train tutors, mainly student teachers and teaching assistants.

The remaining £350 million will go to fund an initiative led by the Education Endowment Foundation. In this National Tutoring Programme (NTP), 75% of the cost of tutoring struggling students will be subsidized. The tutoring may be either one-to-one or one-to-small group, and will be provided by organizations with proven programs and proven capacity to deliver tutoring at scale in primary and secondary schools. EEF is also carrying out evaluations of promising tutoring programs in various parts of England.

What Do the English and Dutch Tutoring Initiatives Mean for the U.S.?

The English and Dutch tutoring initiatives serve as an example of what wealthy nations can do to combat the learning losses of their students in the Covid-19 emergency. By putting these programs in place now, these countries have allowed time to organize their ambitious plans for fall implementation, and to ensure that the money will be wisely spent. In particular, the English National Tutoring Programme has a strong emphasis on the use of tutoring programs with evidence of effectiveness. In fact, the £350 million NTP could turn out to be the largest pragmatic education investment ever made anywhere designed to put proven programs into widespread use, and if all goes well, this aspect of the NTP could have important implications for evidence-based reform more broadly.

The U.S. is only now beginning to seriously consider tutoring as a means of accelerating the learning of students whose learning progress has been harmed by school closures. There have been proposals to invest in tutoring in both houses of Congress, but these are not expected to pass. Unless our leaders embrace the idea of intensive services to help struggling students soon, schools will partially or fully open in the fall into a very serious crisis. The economy will be in recession and schools will be struggling just to keep qualified teachers in every classroom. The amount of loss in education levels will become apparent. Yet there will not be well-worked-out or well-funded means of enabling schools to remedy the severe losses sure to exist, especially for disadvantaged students. These losses could have long-term negative effects on students’ progress, as poor basic skills reduce students’ abilities to learn advanced content, and undermine their confidence and motivation. Tutoring or other solutions would still be effective if applied later next school year, but by then the problems will be even more difficult to solve.

Perhaps national or state governments or large private foundations could at least begin to pilot and evaluate tutoring programs capable of going to scale. This would be immediately beneficial to the students involved and would facilitate effective implementation and scale-up when government makes the needed resources available. But action is needed now. Gaps in achievement between middle class and disadvantaged students were already the most important problem in American education, and the problem has certainly worsened. This is the time to see that all students receive whatever it takes to get back on a track to success.

 This blog was developed with support from Arnold Ventures. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Arnold Ventures.

Note: If you would like to subscribe to Robert Slavin’s weekly blogs, just send your email address to thebee@bestevidence.org. 

Achieving Audacious Goals in Education: Amundson and the Fram

On a recent trip to Norway, I visited the Fram Museum in Oslo. The Fram was Roald Amundson’s ship, used to transport a small crew to the South Pole in 1911. The museum is built around the Fram itself, and visitors can go aboard this amazing ship, surrounded by information and displays about polar exploration. What was most impressive about the Fram is the meticulous attention to detail in every aspect of the expedition. Amundson had undertaken other trips to the polar seas to prepare for his trip, and had carefully studied the experiences of other polar explorers. The ship’s hull was special built to withstand crushing from the shifting of polar ice. He carried many huskies to pull sleds over the ice, and trained them to work in teams.. Every possible problem was carefully anticipated in light of experience, and exact amounts of food for men and dogs were allocated and stored. Amundson said that forgetting “a single trouser button” could doom the effort. As it unfolded, everything worked as anticipated, and all the men and dogs returned safely after reaching the South Pole.

From At the South Pole by Roald Amundsen, 1913 [Public domain]

The story of Amundson and the Fram is an illustration of how to overcome major obstacles to achieve audacious goals. I’d like to build on it to return to a topic I’ve touched on in two previous blogs. The audacious goal: Overcoming the substantial gap in elementary reading achievement between students who qualify for free lunch and those who do not, between African American and White students, and between Hispanic and non-Hispanic students. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), each of these gaps is about one half of a standard deviation, also known as an effect size of +0.50. This is a very large gap, but it has been overcome in a very small number of intensive programs. These programs were able to increase the achievement of disadvantaged students by an effect size of more than +0.50, but few were able to reproduce these gains under normal circumstances. Our goal is to enable thousands of ordinary schools serving disadvantaged students to achieve such outcomes, at a cost of no more than 5% beyond ordinary per-pupil costs.

Educational Reform and Audacious Goals

Researchers have long been creating and evaluating many different approaches to improving reading achievement. This is necessary in the research and development process to find “what works” and build up from there. However, each individual program or practice has a modest effect on key outcomes, and we rarely combine proven programs to achieve an effect large enough to, for example, overcome the achievement gap. This is not what Amundson, or the Wright Brothers, or the worldwide team that achieved eradication of smallpox did. Instead, they set audacious goals and kept at them systematically, using what works, until they were achieved.

I would argue that we should and could do the same in education. The reading achievement gap is the largest problem of educational practice and policy in the U.S. We need to use everything we know how to do to solve it. This means stating in advance that our goal is to find strategies capable of eliminating reading gaps at scale, and refusing to declare victory until this goal is achieved. We need to establish that the goal can be achieved, by ordinary teachers and principals in ordinary schools serving disadvantaged students.

Tutoring Our Way to the Goal

In a previous blog I proposed that the goal of +0.50 could be reached by providing disadvantaged, low-achieving students tutoring in small groups or, when necessary, one-to-one. As I argued there and elsewhere, there is no reading intervention as effective as tutoring. Recent reviews of research have found that well-qualified teaching assistants using proven methods can achieve outcomes as good as those achieved by certified teachers working as tutors, thereby making tutoring much less expensive and more replicable (Inns et al., 2019). Providing schools with significant numbers of well-trained tutors is one likely means of reaching ES=+0.50 for disadvantaged students. Inns et al. (2019) found an average effect size of +0.38 for tutoring by teaching assistants, but several programs had effect sizes of +0.40 to +0.47. This is not +0.50, but it is within striking distance of the goal. However, each school would need multiple tutors in order to provide high-quality tutoring to most students, to extend the known positive effects of tutoring to the whole school.

Combining Intensive Tutoring With Success for All

Tutoring may be sufficient by itself, but research on tutoring has rarely used tutoring schoolwide, to benefit all students in high-poverty schools. It may be more effective to combine widespread tutoring for students who most need it with other proven strategies designed for the whole school, rather than simply extending a program designed for individuals and small groups. One logical strategy to reach the goal of +0.50 in reading might be to combine intensive tutoring with our Success for All whole-school reform model.

Success for All adds to intensive tutoring in several ways. It provides teachers with professional development on proven reading strategies, as well as cooperative learning and classroom management strategies at all levels. Strengthening core reading instruction reduces the number of children at great risk, and even for students who are receiving tutoring, it provides a setting in which students can apply and extend their skills. For students who do not need tutoring, Success for All provides acceleration. In high-poverty schools, students who are meeting reading standards are likely to still be performing below their potential, and improving instruction for all is likely to help these students excel.

Success for All was created in the late 1980s in an attempt to achieve a goal similar to the +0.50 challenge. In its first major evaluation, a matched study in six high-poverty Baltimore elementary schools, Success for All achieved a schoolwide reading effect size of at least +0.50 schoolwide in grades 1-5 on individually administered reading measures. For students in the lowest 25% of the sample at pretest, the effect size averaged +0.75 (Madden et al., 1993). That experiment provided two to six certified teacher tutors per school, who worked one to one with the lowest-achieving first and second graders. The tutors supplemented a detailed reading program, which used cooperative learning, phonics, proven classroom management methods, parent involvement, frequent assessment, distributed leadership, and other elements (as Success for All still does).

An independent follow-up assessment found that the effect maintained to the eighth grade, and also showed a halving of retentions in grade and a halving of assignments to special education, compared to the control group (Borman & Hewes, 2002). Schools using Success for All since that time have rarely been able to afford so many tutors, instead averaging one or two tutors. Many schools using SFA have not been able to afford even one tutor. Still, across 28 qualifying studies, mostly by third parties, the Success for All effect size has averaged +0.27 (Cheung et al., in press). This is impressive, but it is not +0.50. For the lowest achievers, the mean effect size was +0.62, but again, our goal is +0.50 for all disadvantaged students, not just the lowest achievers.

Over a period of years, could schools using Success for All with five or more teaching assistant tutors reach the +0.50 goal? I’m certain of it. Could we go even further, perhaps creating a similar approach for secondary schools or adding in an emphasis on mathematics? That would be the next frontier.

The Policy Importance of +0.50

If we can routinely achieve an effect size of +0.50 in reading in most Title I schools, this would provide a real challenge for policy makers. Many policy makers argue that money does not make much difference in education, or that housing, employment, and other basic economic improvements are needed before major improvements in the education of disadvantaged students will be possible. But what if it became widely known that outcomes in high-poverty schools could be reliably and substantially improved at a modest cost, compared to the outcomes? Policy makers would hopefully focus on finding ways to provide the resources needed if they could be confident in the outcomes.

As Amundson knew, difficult goals can be attained with meticulous planning and high-quality implementation. Every element of his expedition had been tested extensively in real arctic conditions, and had been found to be effective and practical. We would propose taking a similar path to universal success in reading. Each component of a practical plan to reach an effect size of +0.50 or more must be proven to be effective in schools serving many disadvantaged students. Combining proven approaches, we can add sufficiently to the reading achievement of disadvantaged schools to enable them to perform as well as middle class students do. It just takes an audacious goal and the commitment and resources to accomplish it.

References

Borman, G., & Hewes, G. (2002).  Long-term effects and cost effectiveness of Success for All.  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24 (2), 243-266.

Cheung, A., Xie, C., Zhang, T., & Slavin, R. E. (in press). Success for All: A quantitative synthesis of evaluations. Education Research Review.

Inns, A., Lake, C., Pellegrini, M., & Slavin, R. (2019). A synthesis of quantitative research on programs for struggling readers in elementary schools. Available at www.bestevidence.org. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Madden, N. A., Slavin, R. E., Karweit, N. L., Dolan, L., & Wasik, B. (1993). Success for All:  Longitudinal effects of a schoolwide elementary restructuring program. American Educational Reseach Journal, 30, 123-148.

Madden, N. A., & Slavin, R. E. (2017). Evaluations of technology-assisted small-group tutoring for struggling readers. Reading & Writing Quarterly, 1-8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2016.1255577

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

The Gap

Recently, Maryland released its 2019 state PARCC scores.  I read an article about the scores in the Baltimore Sun.  The pattern of scores was the same as usual, some up, some down. Baltimore City was in last place, as usual.  The Sun helpfully noted that this was probably due to high levels of poverty in Baltimore.  Then the article noted that there was a serious statewide gap between African American and White students, followed by the usual shocked but resolute statements about closing the gap from local superintendents.

Some of the superintendents said that in order to combat the gap, they were going to take a careful look at the curriculum.  There is nothing wrong with looking at curriculum.  All students should receive the best curriculum we can provide them.  However, as a means of reducing the gap, changing the curriculum is not likely to make much difference.

First, there is plentiful evidence from rigorous studies showing that changing from one curriculum to another, or one textbook to another, or one set of standards to another, makes little difference in student achievement.  Some curricula have more interesting or up to date content than others. Some meet currently popular standards better than others. But actual meaningful increases in achievement compared to a control group using the old curriculum?  This hardly ever happens. We once examined all of the textbooks rated “green” (the top ranking on EdReports, which reviews textbooks for alignment with college- and career-ready standards). Out of dozens of reading and math texts with this top rating,  two had small positive impacts on learning, compared to control groups.  In contrast, we have found more than 100 reading and math programs that are not textbooks or curricula that have been found to significantly increase student achievement more than control groups using current methods (see www.evidenceforessa.org).

But remember that at the moment, I am talking about reducing gaps, not increasing achievement overall.  I am unaware of any curriculum, textbook, or set of standards that is proven to reduce gaps. Why should they?  By definition, a curriculum or set of standards is for all students.  In the rare cases when a curriculum does improve achievement overall, there is little reason to expect it to increase performance for one  specific group or another.

The way to actually reduce gaps is to provide something extremely effective for struggling students. For example, the Sun article on the PARCC scores highlighted Lakeland Elementary/Middle, a Baltimore City school that gained 20 points on PARCC since 2015. How did they do it? The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) sent groups of undergraduate education majors to Lakeland to provide tutoring and mentoring.  The Lakeland kids were very excited, and apparently learned a lot. I can’t provide rigorous evidence for the UMBC program, but there is quite a lot of evidence for similar programs, in which capable and motivated tutors without teaching certificates work with small groups of students in reading or math.

Tutoring programs and other initiatives that focus on the specific kids who are struggling have an obvious link to reducing gaps, because they go straight to where the problem is rather than doing something less targeted and less intensive.

Serious gap-reduction approaches can be used with any curriculum or set of standards. Districts focused on standards-based reform may also provide tutoring or other proven gap-reduction approaches along with new textbooks to students who need them.  The combination can be powerful. But the tutoring would most likely have worked with the old curriculum, too.

If all struggling students received programs effective enough to bring all of them to current national averages, the U.S. would be the highest-performing national school system in the world.  Social problems due to inequality, frustration, and inadequate skills would disappear. Schools would be happier places for kids and teachers alike.

The gap is a problem we can solve, if we decide to do so.  Given the stakes involved for our economy, society, and future, how could we not?

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Make No Small Plans

“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood, and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram, once recorded, will never die…”

-Daniel Burnham, American architect, 1910

More than 100 years ago, architect Daniel Burnham expressed an important insight. “Make no little plans,” he said. Many people have said that, one way or another. But Burnham’s insight was that big plans matter because they “have magic to stir men’s blood.” Small plans do not, and for this reason may never even be implemented. Burnham believed that even if big plans fail, they have influence into the future, as little plans do not.

Make no small plans.

In education, we sometimes have big plans. Examples include comprehensive school reform in the 1990s, charter schools in the 2000s, and evidence-based reform today. None of these have yet produced revolutionary positive outcomes, but all of them have captured the public imagination. Even if you are not an advocate of any of these, you cannot ignore them, as they take on a life of their own. When conditions are right, they will return many times, in many forms, and may eventually lead to substantial impacts. In medicine, it was demonstrated in the mid-1800s that germs caused disease and that medicine could advance through rigorous experimentation (think Lister and Pasteur, for example). Yet sterile procedures in operations and disciplined research on practical treatments took 100 years to prevail. The medical profession resisted sterile procedures and evidence-based medicine for many years. Sterile procedures and evidence-based medicine were big ideas. It took a long time for them to take hold, but they did prevail, and remained big ideas through all that time.

Big Plans in Education

In education, as in medicine long ago, we have thousands of important problems, and good work continues (and needs to continue) on most of them. However, at least in American education, there is one crucial problem that dwarfs all others and lends itself to truly big plans. This is the achievement gap between students from middle class backgrounds and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. As noted in my April 25 blog, the achievement gap between students who qualify for free lunch and those who do not, between African American and White students, and between Hispanic students and non-Hispanic White students, all average an effect size of about 0.50. This presents a serious challenge. However, as I pointed out in that blog, there are several programs in existence today capable of adding an effect size of +0.50 to the reading or math achievement of students at risk. All programs that can do this involve one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring. Tutoring is expensive, but recent research has found that well-trained and well-supervised tutors with BAs, but not necessarily teaching certificates, can obtain the same outcomes as certified teachers do, at half the cost. Using our own Success for All program with six tutors per school (K-5), high-poverty African American elementary schools in Baltimore obtained effect sizes averaging +0.50 for all students and +0.75 for students in the lowest 25% of their grades (Madden et al., 1993). A follow-up to eighth grade found that achievement outcomes maintained and both retentions and special education placements were cut in half (Borman & Hewes, 2003). We have not had the opportunity to once again implement Success for All with so much tutoring included, but even with fewer tutors, Success for All has had substantial impacts. Cheung et al. (2019) found an average effect size of +0.27 across 28 randomized and matched studies, a more than respectable outcome for a whole-school intervention. For the lowest-achieving students, the average was +0.56.

Knowing that Success for All can achieve these outcomes is important in itself, but it is also an indication that substantial positive effects can be achieved for whole schools, and with sufficient tutors, can equal the entire achievement gaps according to socio-economic status and race. If one program can do this, why not many others?

Imagine that the federal government or other large funders decided to support the development and evaluation of several different ideas. Funders might establish a goal of increasing reading achievement by an effect size of +0.50, or as close as possible to this level, working with high-poverty schools. Funders would seek organizations that have already demonstrated success at an impressive level, but not yet +0.50, who could describe a compelling strategy to increase their impact to +0.50 or more. Depending on the programs’ accomplishments and needs, they might be funded to experiment with enhancements to their promising model. For example, they might add staff, add time (e.g., continue for multiple years), or add additional program components likely to strengthen the overall model. Once programs could demonstrate substantial outcomes in pilots, they might be funded to do a cluster randomized trial. If this experiment shows positive effects approaching +0.50 or more, the developers might receive funding for scale-up. If the outcomes are substantially positive but significantly less than +0.50, the funders might decide to help the developers make changes leading up to a second randomized experiment.

There are many details to be worked out, but the core idea could capture the imagination and energy of educators and public-spirited citizens alike. This time, we are not looking for marginal changes that can be implemented cheaply. This time, we will not quit until we have many proven, replicable programs, each of which is so powerful that it can, over a period of years, remedy the entire achievement gap. This time, we are not making changes in policy or governance and hoping for the best. This time, we are going directly to the schools where the disadvantaged kids are, and we are not declaring victory until we can guarantee such students gains that will give them the same outcomes as those of the middle class kids in the suburbs.

Perhaps the biggest idea of all is the idea that we need big ideas with big outcomes!

Anyway, this is my big plan. What’s yours?

————

Note: Just as I was starting on this blog, I got an email from Ulrich Boser at the Center for American Progress. CAP and the Thomas Fordham Foundation are jointly sponsoring an “Education Moonshot,” including a competition with a grand prize of $10,000 for a “moonshot idea that will revolutionize schooling and dramatically improve student outcomes.” For more on this, please visit the announcement site. Submissions are due August 1^st at this online portal and involve telling them in 500 words your, well, big plan.

 

References

Borman, G., & Hewes, G. (2003).  Long-term effects and cost effectiveness of Success for All.  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24 (2), 243-266.

Cheung, A., Xie, C., Zhuang, T., & Slavin, R. E. (2019). Success for All: A quantitative synthesis of evaluations. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Madden, N.A., Slavin, R.E., Karweit, N.L., Dolan, L.J., & Wasik, B.A. (1993).  Success for All:  Longitudinal effects of a restructuring program for inner-city elementary schools.  American Educational Research Journal, 30, 123-148.

 

 

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Could Proven Programs Eliminate Gaps in Elementary Reading Achievement?

What if every child in America could read at grade level or better? What if the number of students in special education for learning disabilities, or retained in grade, could be cut in half?

What if students who become behavior problems or give up on learning because of nothing more than reading difficulties could instead succeed in reading and no longer be frustrated by failure?

Today these kinds of outcomes are only pipe dreams. Despite decades of effort and billions of dollars directed toward remedial and special education, reading levels have barely increased.  Gaps between middle class and economically disadvantaged students remain wide, as do gaps between ethnic groups. We’ve done so much, you might think, and nothing has really worked at scale.

Yet today we have many solutions to the problems of struggling readers, solutions so effective that if widely and effectively implemented, they could substantially change not only the reading skills, but the life chances of students who are struggling in reading.

How do I know this is possible? The answer is that the evidence is there for all to see.

This week, my colleagues and I released a review of research on programs for struggling readers. The review, written by Amanda Inns, Cynthia Lake, Marta Pellegrini, and myself, uses academic language and rigorous review methods. But you don’t have to be a research expert to understand what we found out. In ten minutes, just reading this blog, you will know what needs to be done to have a powerful impact on struggling readers.

Everyone knows that there are substantial gaps in student reading performance according to social class and race. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, here are key gaps in terms of effect sizes at fourth grade:

	Gap in Effect Sizes
No Free/Reduced lunch/ Free/Reduced lunch	0.56
White/African American	0.52
White/Hispanic	0.46

These are big differences. In order to eliminate these gaps, we’d have to provide schools serving disadvantaged and minority students with programs or services sufficient to increase their reading scores by about a half standard deviation. Is this really possible?

Can We Really Eliminate Such Big and Longstanding Gaps?

Yes, we can. And we can do it cost-effectively.

Our review examined thousands of studies of programs intended to improve the reading performance of struggling readers. We found 59 studies of 39 different programs that met very high standards of research quality. 73% of the qualifying studies used random assignment to experimental or control groups, just as the most rigorous medical studies do. We organized the programs into response to intervention (RTI) tiers:

Tier 1 means whole-class programs, not just for struggling readers

Tier 2 means targeted services for students who are struggling to read

Tier 3 means intensive services for students who have serious difficulties.

Our categories were as follows:

Multi-Tier (Tier 1 + tutoring for students who need it)

Tier 1:

• Whole-class programs

Tier 2:

• Technology programs
• One-to-small group tutoring

Tier 3:

• One-to-one tutoring

We are not advocating for RTI itself, because the data on RTI are unclear. But it is just common sense to use proven programs with all students, then proven remedial approaches with struggling readers, then intensive services for students for whom Tier 2 is not sufficient.

Do We Have Proven Programs Able to Overcome the Gaps?

The table below shows average effect sizes for specific reading approaches. Wherever you see effect sizes that approach or exceed +0.50, you are looking at proven solutions to the gaps, or at least programs that could become a component in a schoolwide plan to ensure the success of all struggling readers.

Programs That Work for Struggling Elementary Readers

Multi-Tier Approaches	Grades Proven	No. of Studies	Mean Effect Size
Success for All	K-5	3	+0.35
Enhanced Core Reading Instruction	1	1	+0.24
Tier 1 – Classroom Approaches
Cooperative Integrated Reading                        & Composition (CIRC)	2-6	3	+0.11
PALS	1	1	+0.65
Tier 2 – One-to-Small Group Tutoring
Read, Write, & Type (T 1-3)	1	1	+0.42
Lindamood (T 1-3)	1	1	+0.65
SHIP (T 1-3)	K-3	1	+0.39
Passport to Literacy (TA 1-4/7)	4	4	+0.15
Quick Reads (TA 1-2)	2-3	2	+0.22
Tier 3 One-to-One Tutoring
Reading Recovery (T)	1	3	+0.47
Targeted Reading Intervention (T)	K-1	2	+0.50
Early Steps (T)	1	1	+0.86
Lindamood (T)	K-2	1	+0.69
Reading Rescue (T or TA)	1	1	+0.40
Sound Partners (TA)	K-1	2	+0.43
SMART (PV)	K-1	1	+0.40
SPARK (PV)	K-2	1	+0.51

Key:    T: Certified teacher tutors

TA: Teaching assistant tutors

PV: Paid volunteers (e.g., AmeriCorps members)

1-X: For small group tutoring, the usual group size for tutoring (e.g., 1-2, 1-4)

(For more information on each program, see www.evidenceforessa.org)

The table is a road map to eliminating the achievement gaps that our schools have wrestled with for so long. It only lists programs that succeeded at a high level, relative to others at the same tier levels. See the full report or www.evidenceforessa for information on all programs.

It is important to note that there is little evidence of the effectiveness of tutoring in grades 3-5. Almost all of the evidence is from grades K-2. However, studies done in England in secondary schools have found positive effects of three reading tutoring programs in the English equivalent of U.S. grades 6-7. These findings suggest that when well-designed tutoring programs for grades 3-5 are evaluated, they will also show very positive impacts. See our review on secondary reading programs at www.bestevidence.org for information on these English middle school tutoring studies. On the same website, you can also see a review of research on elementary mathematics programs, which reports that most of the successful studies of tutoring in math took place in grades 2-5, another indicator that reading tutoring is also likely to be effective in these grades.

Some of the individual programs have shown effects large enough to overcome gaps all by themselves if they are well implemented (i.e., ES = +0.50 or more). Others have effect sizes lower than +0.50 but if combined with other programs elsewhere on the list, or if used over longer time periods, are likely to eliminate gaps. For example, one-to-one tutoring by certified teachers is very effective, but very expensive. A school might implement a Tier 1 or multi-tier approach to solve all the easy problems inexpensively, then use cost-effective one-to-small group methods for students with moderate reading problems, and only then use one-to-one tutoring with the small number of students with the greatest needs.

Schools, districts, and states should consider the availability, practicality, and cost of these solutions to arrive at a workable solution. They then need to make sure that the programs are implemented well enough and long enough to obtain the outcomes seen in the research, or to improve on them.

But the inescapable conclusion from our review is that the gaps can be closed, using proven models that already exist. That’s big news, news that demands big changes.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for American Education: Images of Teachers and Students in Action

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

Proven Tutoring Approaches: The Path to Universal Proficiency

There are lots of problems in education that are fundamentally difficult. Ensuring success in early reading, however, is an exception. We know what skills children need in order to succeed in reading. No area of teaching has a better basis in high-quality research. Yet the reading performance of America’s children is not improving at an adequate pace. Reading scores have hardly changed in the past decade, and gaps between white, African-American, and Hispanic students have been resistant to change.

In light of the rapid growth in the evidence base, and of the policy focus on early reading at the federal and state levels, this is shameful. We already know a great deal about how to improve early reading, and we know how to learn more. Yet our knowledge is not translating into improved practice and improved outcomes on a large enough scale.

There are lots of complex problems in education, and complex solutions. But here’s a really simple solution:

 

Over the past 30 years researchers have experimented with all sorts of approaches to improve students’ reading achievement. There are many proven and promising classroom approaches, and such programs should be used with all students in initial teaching as broadly as possible. Effective classroom instruction, universal access to eyeglasses, and other proven approaches could surely reduce the number of students who need tutors. But at the end of the day, every child must read well. And the only tool we have that can reliably make a substantial difference at scale with struggling readers is tutors, using proven one-to-one or small-group methods.

I realized again why tutors are so important in a proposal I’m making to the State of Maryland, which wants to bring all or nearly all students to “proficient” on its state test, the PARCC. “Proficient” on the PARCC is a score of 750, with a standard deviation of about 50. The state mean is currently around 740. I made a colorful chart (below) showing “bands” of scores below 750 to show how far students have to go to get to 750.

 

Each band covers an effect size of 0.20. There are several classroom reading programs with effect sizes this large, so if schools adopted them, they could move children scoring at 740 to 750. These programs can be found at www.evidenceforessa.org. But implementing these programs alone still leaves half of the state’s children not reaching “proficient.”

 Now think about students at 730. They need to advance 20 points, or an effect size of +0.40. This puts us in a region only occupied by tutoring. I am not aware of any approach other than proven one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring models that has high-quality replicated evidence of improving standardized tests by an effect size of +0.40.

What about students at 720? They need 30 points, or +0.60. The best one-to-one tutoring can achieve outcomes like this, but these are the only solutions that can.

Here are mean effect sizes for various reading tutoring programs with strong evidence:

 

 

As this chart shows, one-to-one tutoring, by well-trained teachers or paraprofessionals using proven programs, can potentially have the impacts needed to bring most students scoring 720 (needing 30 points or an effect size of +0.60) to proficiency (750). Three programs have reported effect sizes of at least +0.60, and several others have approached this level. But what about students scoring below 720?

So far I’ve been sticking to established facts, studies of tutoring that are, in most cases, already being disseminated. Now I’m entering the region of well-justified supposition. Almost all studies of tutoring occupy just one year or less. But what if the lowest achievers could receive multiple years of tutoring, if necessary?

One study, over 2½ years, did find an effect size of +0.68 for one-to-one tutoring. Could we do better that that? Most likely. In addition to providing multiple years of tutoring, it should be possible to design programs to achieve one-year effect sizes of +1.00 or more. These may incorporate technology or personalized approaches specific to the needs of individual children. Using the best programs for multiple years, if necessary, could increase outcomes further. Also, as noted earlier, using proven programs other than tutoring for all students may increase outcomes for students who also receive tutoring.

But isn’t tutoring expensive? Yes it is. But it is not as expensive as the costs of reading failure: Remediation, special education, disappointment, and delinquency. If we could greatly improve the reading performance of low achievers, this would of course reduce inequities across the board. Reducing inequities in educational outcomes could reduce inequities in our entire society, an outcome of enormous importance.

Even providing a substantial amount of teacher tutoring could, by my calculations, increase total state education expenditures (in Maryland) by only about 12%. These costs could be reduced greatly or even eliminated by reducing expenditures on ineffective programs, reducing special education placements, and other savings. Having some tutoring done by part time teachers may reduce costs. Using small-group tutoring (fewer than 6 students at a time) for students with milder problems may save a great deal of money. Even at full cost, the necessary funding could be phased in over a period of 6 years at 2% a year.

The bottom line is that the low levels of achievement and high levels of gaps according to economic and racial differences could be improved a great deal using methods already proven to be effective and already widely available. Educators and policy makers are always promising policies that bring every child to proficiency: “No Child Left Behind” and “Every Student Succeeds” come to mind. Yet if these outcomes are truly possible, why shouldn’t we be pursuing them, with every resource at our disposal?

Money and Evidence

Many years ago, I spent a few days testifying in a funding equity case in Alabama. At the end of my testimony, the main lawyer for the plaintiffs drove me to the airport. “I think we’re going to win this case,” he said, “But will it help my clients?”

The lawyer’s question has haunted me ever since. In Alabama, then and now, there are enormous inequities in education funding in rich and poor districts due to differences in property tax receipts in different districts. There are corresponding differences in student outcomes. The same is true in most states. To a greater or lesser degree, most states and the federal government provide some funding to reduce inequalities, but in most places it is still the case that poor districts have to tax themselves at a higher rate to produce education funding that is significantly lower than that of their wealthier neighbors.

Funding inequities are worse than wrong, they are repugnant. When I travel in other countries and try to describe our system, it usually takes me a while to get people outside the U.S. to even understand what I am saying. “So schools in poor areas get less than those in wealthy ones? Surely that cannot be true.” In fact, it is true in the U.S., but in all of our peer countries, national or at least regional funding policies ensure basic equality in school funding, and in most cases I know about they then add additional funding on top of equalized funding for schools serving many children in poverty. For example, England has long had equal funding, and the Conservative government added “Pupil Premium” funding in which each disadvantaged child brings additional funds to his or her school. Pupil Premium is sort of like Title I in the U.S., if you can imagine Title I adding resources on top of equal funding, which it does in only a few U.S. states.

So let’s accept the idea that funding inequity is a BAD THING. Now consider this: Would eliminating funding inequities eliminate achievement gaps in U.S. schools? This gets back to the lawyer’s question. If we somehow won a national “case” that required equalizing school funding, would the “clients” benefit?

More money for disadvantaged schools would certainly be welcome, and it would certainly create the possibility of major advances. But in order to maximize the impact of significant additional funding, it all depends on what schools do with the added dollars. Of course you’d have to increase teachers’ salaries and reduce class sizes to draw highly qualified teachers into disadvantaged schools. But you’d also have to spend a significant portion of new funds to help schools implement proven programs with fidelity and verve.

Again, England offers an interesting model. Twenty years ago, achievement in England was very unequal, despite equal funding. Children of immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh, Africans, Afro-Caribbeans, and other minorities performed well below White British children. The Labour government implemented a massive effort to change this, starting with the London Challenge and continuing with a Manchester Challenge and a Black Country Challenge in the post-industrial Midlands. Each “challenge” provided substantial professional development to school staffs, as well as organizing achievement data to show school leaders that other schools with exactly the same demographic challenges were achieving far better results.

Today, children of Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants are scoring at the English mean. Children of African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants are just below the English mean. Policy makers in England are now turning their attention to White working-class boys. But the persistent and substantial gaps we see as so resistant to change in the U.S. are essentially gone in England.

Today, we are getting even smarter about how to turn dollars into enhanced achievement, due to investments by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and Investing in Innovation (i3) program in the U.S. and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in England. In both countries, however, we lack the funding to put into place what we know how to do on a large enough scale to matter, but this need not always be the case.

Funding matters. No one can make chicken soup out of chicken feathers, as we say in Baltimore. But funding in itself will not solve our achievement gap. Funding needs to be spent on specific, high-impact investments to make a big difference.

Evidence, Brown, and the Civil Rights Act

2014 is the anniversary of two great milestones in American history: Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) and the Civil Rights Act (1964). I was too young to remember the first, but I remember exactly where I was when I heard that the Civil Rights Act had passed. I was 13, working as a volunteer in a giant orphanage in Washington, DC, called Junior Village. The kids, hundreds of them from babies to teens, were all African American, and so was most of the staff, plus a few liberal whites, so the news was greeted with euphoria. That summer changed my life.

Many people are writing to commemorate these great events, always with a question of how far we’ve really come toward the fairness and equality promised both by Brown and by the Civil Rights Act. Anyone with eyes to see has to acknowledge the progress that has taken place, but also the huge inequities that still remain.

I won’t add to the half-hurrahs being widely offered. During the time since Brown and the Civil Rights Act, we, the greatest nation on Earth, rocketed to the moon, cured many diseases, led astonishing developments in technology, defeated the Soviets, and on and on. And yet we still struggle to solve the most basic issues of equality between racial and ethnic groups: employment, education, health, and more. If inequality were merely a technical problem, we would have solved it. But it’s a problem of will, and therefore we consider the unacceptable acceptable. For shame.

In my own field, education, the “gap” between white students and African American and Hispanic children is always decried but never solved. It has remained about the same since 1980. Could we solve it? Could anyone doubt that the greatest nation on the planet could solve such a problem if it wanted to?

If we were truly committed to solving this problem, here is what we’d do. First, we’d identify all of the problems holding back minority students. Then we’d put in place solutions already known to be effective. We’d then commission research and development on the scale of the Manhattan Project to find effective, replicable solutions to the remaining problems. As approaches are validated in rigorous evaluations, we’d put them into practice in all schools that need them. We’d do the same in public health, mental health, social services, juvenile justice, employment, housing, and every other area that affects children and families. If America decided to do these things, it would succeed. There is no doubt. But did you notice the word “if” at the beginning of this paragraph?

America is an incredibly wealthy and capable country. Just as one example, we spent more than $2 trillion on the Iraq war. It did not even cause taxes to go up. We could have spent that much to combat inequality. We still could, and it would actually cost far less. But we have, thus far at least, chosen not to.

Even in dysfunctional Washington, we can still make progress in learning how to use the funds we already have committed to education and other services more effectively. Progressives and conservatives share an interest in using federal funds efficiently, and bipartisan alliances are coalescing to find out what works and use that information to make good policy choices that may eventually reduce achievement gaps. That’s the realistic grown-up me talking. The hopeful 13-year-old who celebrated the Civil Rights Act has confronted reality.

But can anyone explain to me why we shouldn’t be achieving what everyone knows can be achieved to bring about true equality and opportunity for all?

Follow Robert E. Slavin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RobertSlavin

Robert E. Slavin

Director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University