How Tutoring Works (Cooking With The Grandkids)

My wife, Nancy, and I have three grandkids: Adaya (4 ½), Leo (3 ½), and Ava (8 months). They all live in Baltimore, so we see quite a lot of them, which is wonderful.

As with most grandparents and grandkids, one of our favorite activities with Adaya and Leo is cooking. We have two folding stepladders in the kitchen, which the kids work from. They help make pancakes, scrambled eggs, spaghetti, and other family classics. We start off giving the kids easy and safe tasks, like measuring and pouring ingredients into bowls and mixing, and as they become proficient, we let them pour ingredients into hot pans, scramble eggs on the stove, and so on. They love every bit of this, and are so proud of their accomplishments.

So here is my question. What are we making when we cook with the grandkids? If you say pancakes and eggs, that’s not wrong, but perhaps these are the least important things we are doing.

What we are really doing is building the thrill of mastery in a loving and supportive context. All children are born into a confusing world. They want to understand their world and to learn to operate effectively in it. They want to do what the big people do. They also want to be loved and valued.

Now consider children who need tutoring because they are behind in reading. These kids are in very big trouble, and they know it. All of them understand what the purpose of school is. It is to learn to read. Yet they know they are not succeeding.

The solution, I believe, is a lot like cooking with people who love you. In other words, it’s tutoring, in small groups or one-to-one.

The effectiveness of tutoring is very well established in rigorous research, as I’ve noted more than once in this series of blogs. No surprise there. But what is surprising is that well-trained, caring tutors without teaching certificates using well-structured materials get outcomes just as good as those obtained by certified teachers. How can this be? If tutoring works primarily because it enables teachers to adapt instruction to meet the learning needs of individual students, then you’d expect that students who receive tutoring from certified, experienced teachers would get much better outcomes than those tutored by teaching assistants. But they don’t, on average. Further, a U.K. study of one-to-one tutoring over the internet found an effect size of zero. These and other unexpected findings support a conclusion that while the ability to individualize instruction is important in tutoring, it is not enough. The additional factor that explains much of the powerful impacts of tutoring, I believe, is love. Most tutors, with or without teaching certificates, love the children they tutor in a way that a teacher with 25 or 30 students usually cannot. A tutor with one or just a few children at a time is certain to get to know those children, and to care about them deeply. From the perspective of struggling children, their tutor is not just a teacher. She or he is a lifeline, a new chance to achieve the mastery they crave. Someone who knows and cares about then and will stick with them until they can read.

This is why individual or small-group tutoring is a bit like cooking with your grandparents. In both settings, children receive the two things they need and value the most: love and mastery.

My point here is not sentimental or idealistic. It is deadly practical. We already know a lot about how to use tutoring effectively and cost-effectively. Yet there is a great deal more we need to learn to maximize the benefits and minimize the costs of effective tutoring. We need to find out how to extend positive effects to larger numbers of students, to learn how to maintain and build on initial successes in the early grades, how to successfully tutor upper-elementary and secondary students, and how to reach students who still do not succeed despite small-group tutoring. We need to experiment with adaptations of tutoring for English learners.

We know that tutoring is powerful, but we need to make it more cost-effective without reducing its impact, so that many more children can experience the thrill of mastery. To do that, we have a lot of work to do. Let’s get cooking!

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.

Great Tutors Could Be a Source of Great Teachers

In a recent blog, I wrote about findings of three recent reviews of research on tutoring, contained within broader reviews of research on effective programs for struggling elementary readers, struggling secondary readers, and math. The blog reported the astonishing finding that in each of the reviews, outcomes for students tutored by paraprofessionals (teaching assistants) were as good, and usually somewhat better, than outcomes for students tutored by teachers.

It is important to note that the paraprofessionals tutoring students usually had BAs, one indicator of high quality. But since paras are generally paid about half as much as teachers, using them enables schools to serve twice as many struggling students at about the same cost as hiring teacher tutors. And because there are teacher shortages in many areas, such as inner cities and rural locations, sufficient teachers may not be available in some places at any cost.

In my earlier blog, I explained all this, but now I’d like to expand on one aspect of the earlier blog I only briefly mentioned.

If any district or state decided to invest substantially in high-quality paraprofessional tutors and train them in proven one-to-one and one-to-small group tutoring strategies, it would almost certainly increase the achievement of struggling learners and reduce retentions and special education placements. But it could also provide a means of attracting capable recent university graduates into teaching.

Imagine that districts or states recruited students graduating from local universities to serve in a “tutor corps.” Those accepted would be trained and mentored to become outstanding tutors. From within that group, tutors who show the greatest promise would be invited to participate in a fast-track teacher certification program. This would add coursework to the paraprofessionals’ schedules, while they continue tutoring during other times. In time, the paraprofessionals would be given opportunities to do brief classroom internships, and then student teaching. Finally, they would receive their certification, and would be assigned to a school in the district or state.

There are several features worth noting about this proposal. First, the paraprofessionals would be paid throughout their teacher training, because at all points they would be providing valuable services to children. This would make it easier for recent university graduates to take courses leading to certification, which could expand the number of promising recent graduates who might entertain the possibility of becoming teachers. Paying teacher education candidates (as tutors) throughout their time in training could open the profession to a broader range of talented candidates, including diverse candidates who could not afford traditional teacher education.

Second, the whole process of recruiting well-qualified paraprofessionals, training and mentoring them as tutors, selecting the best of them to become certified, and providing coursework and student teaching experiences for them, would be managed by school districts or states, not by universities. School districts and states have a strong motivation to select the best teachers, see that they get excellent training and mentoring, and proceed to certification only when they are ready. Coursework might be provided by university professors contracted by the district or qualified individuals within the district or state. Again, because the district or state has a strong interest in having these experiences be optimal for their future teachers, they would be likely to take an active role in ensuring that coursework and coaching are first rate.

One important advantage of this system would be that it would give school, district, and state leaders opportunities to see future teachers operate in real schools over extended periods of time, first as tutors, then as interns, then as student teachers. At the end of the process, the school district or state should be willing to guarantee that all who succeed in this demanding sequence will be offered a job. They should be able to do this with confidence, because school and district staff would have seen the candidate work with real children in real schools.

The costs of this system might be minimal. During tutoring, internships, and student teaching, teacher candidates are providing invaluable services to struggling students. The only additional cost would entail providing coursework to meet state or district requirements. But this cost could be modest, and in exchange for paying for or providing the courses, the district or state would gain the right to select instructors of very high quality and insist on their effectiveness in practice. These are the schools’ own future teachers, and they should not be satisfied with less than stellar teacher education.

The system I’m proposing could operate alongside of traditional programs provided by universities. School districts or states might in fact create partnerships in which all teacher education candidates would serve as tutors as part of their teacher education, in which case university-led and district-led teacher education may essentially merge into one.

This system is more obviously attuned to the needs of elementary schools than secondary schools, because historically tutors have been rarely used in the secondary grades. Yet recent evidence from studies in England (http://www.bestevidence.org/reading/mhs/mhs_read.htm) has shown positive effects of tutoring in reading in the middle grades, and it seems likely that one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring would be beneficial in all major subjects and, as in elementary school, may keep students who are far behind grade level in a given subject out of special education and able to keep up with their classmates. If paraprofessional tutors can work in the secondary grades, this would form the basis for a teacher certification plan like the one I have described.

Designing teacher certification programs around the needs of recent BAs sounds like Teach for America, and in many ways it is. But this system would, I’d argue, be more likely to attract large numbers of talented young people who would be more likely than TFA grads to stay in teaching for many years.

The main reason schools, districts, and states should invest in tutoring by paraprofessionals is to serve the large number of struggling learners who exist in every district. But in the course of doing this, districts could also take control of their own destinies and select and train the teachers they need. The result would be better teachers for all students, and a teaching profession that knows how to use proven programs to ensure the success of all.

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.

New Findings on Tutoring: Four Shockers

One-to-one and one-to-small group tutoring have long existed as remedial approaches for students who are performing far below expectations. Everyone knows that tutoring works, and nothing in this blog contradicts this. Although different approaches have their champions, the general consensus is that tutoring is very effective, and the problem with widespread use is primarily cost (and for tutoring by teachers, availability of sufficient teachers). If resources were unlimited, one-to-one tutoring would be the first thing most educators would recommend, and they would not be wrong. But resources are never unlimited, and the numbers of students performing far below grade level are overwhelming, so cost-effectiveness is a serious concern. Further, tutoring seems so obviously effective that we may not really understand what makes it work.

In recent reviews, my colleagues and I examined what is known about tutoring. Beyond the simple conclusion that “tutoring works,” we found some big surprises, four “shockers.” Prepare to be amazed! Further, I propose an explanation to account for these unexpected findings.

We have recently released three reviews that include thorough, up-to-date reviews of research on tutoring. One is a review of research on programs for struggling readers in elementary schools by Amanda Inns and colleagues (2018). Another is a review on programs for secondary readers by Ariane Baye and her colleagues (2017). Finally, there is a review on elementary math programs by Marta Pellegrini et al. (2018). All three use essentially identical methods, from the Best Evidence Encyclopedia (www.bestevidence.org). In addition to sections on tutoring strategies, all three also include other, non-tutoring methods directed at the same populations and outcomes.

What we found challenges much of what everyone thought they knew about tutoring.

Shocker #1: In all three reviews, tutoring by paraprofessionals (teaching assistants) was at least as effective as tutoring by teachers. This was found for reading and math, and for one-to-one and one-to-small group tutoring. For struggling elementary readers, para tutors actually had higher effect sizes than teacher tutors. Effect sizes were +0.53 for paras and +0.36 for teachers in one-to-one tutoring. For one-to-small group, effect sizes were +0.27 for paras, +0.09 for teachers.

Shocker #2: Volunteer tutoring was far less effective than tutoring by either paras or teachers. Some programs using volunteer tutors provided them with structured materials and extensive training and supervision. These found positive impacts, but far less than those for paraprofessional tutors. Volunteers tutoring one-to-one had an effect size of +0.18, paras had an effect size of +0.53. Because of the need for recruiting, training, supervision, and management, and also because the more effective tutoring models provide stipends or other pay, volunteers were not much less expensive than paraprofessionals as tutors.

Shocker #3: Inexpensive substitutes for tutoring have not worked. Everyone knows that one-to-one tutoring works, so there has long been a quest for approaches that simulate what makes tutoring work. Yet so far, no one, as far as I know, has found a way to turn lead into tutoring gold. Although tutoring in math was about as effective as tutoring in reading, a program that used online math tutors communicating over the Internet from India and Sri Lanka to tutor students in England, for example, had no effect. Technology has long been touted as a means of simulating tutoring, yet even when computer-assisted instruction programs have been effective, their effect sizes have been far below those of the least expensive tutoring models, one-to-small group tutoring by paraprofessionals. In fact, in the Inns et al. (2018) review, no digital reading program was found to be effective with struggling readers in elementary schools.

Shocker #4: Certain whole-class and whole-school approaches work as well or better for struggling readers than tutoring, on average. In the Inns et al. (2018) review, the average effect size for one-to-one tutoring approaches was +0.31, and for one-to-small group approaches it was +0.14. Yet the mean for whole-class approaches, such as Ladders to Literacy (ES = +0.48), PALS (ES = +0.65), and Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (ES = +0.19) averaged +0.33, similar to one-to-one tutoring by teachers (ES = +0.36). The mean effect sizes for comprehensive tiered school approaches, such as Success for All (ES = +0.41) and Enhanced Core Reading Instruction (ES = +0.22) was +0.43, higher than any category of tutoring (note that these models include tutoring as part of an integrated response to implementation approach). Whole-class and whole-school approaches work with many more students than do tutoring models, so these impacts are obtained at a much lower cost per pupil.

Why does tutoring work?

Most researchers and others would say that well-structured tutoring models work primarily because they allow tutors to fully individualize instruction to the needs of students. Yet if this were the only explanation, then other individualized approaches, such as computer-assisted instruction, would have outcomes similar to those of tutoring. Why is this not the case? And why do paraprofessionals produce at least equal outcomes to those produced by teachers as tutors? None of this squares with the idea that the impact of tutoring is entirely due to the tutor’s ability to recognize and respond to students’ unique needs. If that were so, other forms of individualization would be a lot more effective, and teachers would presumably be a lot more effective at diagnosing and responding to students’ problems than would less highly trained paraprofessionals. Further, whole-class and whole-school reading approaches, which are not completely individualized, would have much lower effect sizes than tutoring.

My theory to account for the positive effects of tutoring in light of the four “shockers” is this:

Tutoring does not work due to individualization alone. It works due to individualization plus nurturing and attention.

This theory begins with the fundamental and obvious assumption that children, perhaps especially low achievers, are highly motivated by nurturing and attention, perhaps far more than by academic success. They are eager to please adults who relate to them personally. The tutoring setting, whether one-to-one or one-to-very small group, gives students the undivided attention of a valued adult who can give them personal nurturing and attention to a degree that a teacher with 20-30 students cannot. Struggling readers may be particularly eager to please a valued adult, because they crave recognition for success in a skill that has previously eluded them.

Nurturing and attention may explain the otherwise puzzling equality of outcomes obtained by teachers and paraprofessionals as tutors. Both types of tutors, using structured materials, may be equally able to individualize instruction, and there is no reason to believe that paras will be any less nurturing or attentive. The assumption that teachers would be more effective as tutors depends on the belief that tutoring is complicated and requires the extensive education a teacher receives. This may be true for very unusual learners, but for most struggling students, a paraprofessional may be as capable as a teacher in providing individualization, nurturing, and attention. This is not to suggest that paraprofessionals are as capable as teachers in every way. Teachers have to be good at many things: preparing and delivering lessons, managing and motivating classes, and much more. However, in their roles as tutors, teachers and paraprofessionals may be more similar.

Volunteers certainly can be nurturing and attentive, and can be readily trained in structured programs to individualize instruction. The problem, however, is that studies of volunteer programs report difficulties in getting volunteers to attend every day and to avoid dropping out when they get a paying job. This is may be less of a problem when volunteers receive a stipend; paid volunteers are much more effective than unpaid ones.

The failure of tutoring substitutes, such as individualized technology, is easy to predict if the importance of nurturing and attention is taken into account. Technology may be fun, and may be individualized, but it usually separates students from the personal attention of caring adults.

Whole-Class and Whole-School Approaches.

Perhaps the biggest shocker of all is the finding that for struggling readers, certain non-technology approaches to instruction for whole classes and schools can be as effective as tutoring. Whole-class and whole-school approaches can serve many more students at much lower cost, of course. These classroom approaches mostly use cooperative learning and phonics-focused teaching, or both, and the whole-school models especially Success for All, combine these approaches with tutoring for students who need it.

The success of certain whole-class programs, of certain tutoring approaches, and of whole-school approaches that combine proven teaching strategies with tutoring for students who need more, argues for response to intervention (RTI), the policy that has been promoted by the federal government since the 1990s. So what’s new? What’s new is that the approach I’m advocating is not just RTI. It’s RTI done right, where each component of the strategy has strong evidence of effectiveness.

The good news is that we have powerful and cost-effective tools at our disposal that we could be putting to use on a much more systematic scale. Yet we rarely do this, and as a result far too many students continue to struggle with reading, even ending up in special education due to problems schools could have prevented. That is the real shocker. It’s up to our whole profession to use what works, until reading failure becomes a distant memory. There are many problems in education that we don’t know how to solve, but reading failure in elementary school isn’t one of them.

Practical Implications.

Perhaps the most important practical implication of this discussion is a realization that benefits similar or greater than those of one-to-one tutoring by teachers can be obtained in other ways that can be cost-effectively extended to many more students: Using paraprofessional tutors, using one-to-small group tutoring, or using whole-class and whole-school tiered strategies. It is no longer possible to say with a shrug, “of course tutoring works, but we can’t afford it.” The “four shockers” tell us we can do better, without breaking the bank.

References

Baye, A., Lake, C., Inns, A., & Slavin, R. (2017). Effective reading programs for secondary students. Manuscript submitted for publication. Also see Baye, A., Lake, C., Inns, A. & Slavin, R. E. (2017, August). Effective Reading Programs for Secondary Students. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, Center for Research and Reform in Education.

Inns, A., Lake, C., Pellegrini, M., & Slavin, R. (2018). Effective programs for struggling readers: A best-evidence synthesis. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, Washington, DC.

Pellegrini, M., Inns, A., & Slavin, R. (2018). Effective programs in elementary mathematics: A best-evidence synthesis. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, Washington, DC.

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.

Photo by Westsara (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Trans-Atlantic Concord: Tutoring by Paraprofessionals Works

Whenever I speak to skeptical audiences about the enormous potential of evidence-based reform in education, three of the top complaints I always hear are as follows.

In high-quality, randomized experiments, nothing works.
Since educational outcomes depend so much on context, even programs that do work somewhere cannot be assumed to work elsewhere.
Even if a given approach is found to be effective in many contexts, it is unlikely to be scalable to serve large numbers of students and schools.

In light of these criticisms, I was delighted to see a recent blog by Jonathan Sharples at the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), the main funder of randomized evaluations of educational programs in England (and a former colleague at the University of York). The blog summarizes results from six experiments in England that used what they call teaching assistants (we call them paraprofessionals or aides) to tutor struggling students one-to-one or in small groups, in reading or math, at various grade levels.

Sharples included a table summarizing the results, which I have adapted here:

What is interesting about this chart is that although every study was a third-party randomized experiment, the effect sizes fall within a range from moderately positive to very positive (+0.12 to +0.51).

Another interesting thing about the table is that it resembles findings in U.S. studies of tutoring by paraprofessionals. Here is a chart of such studies:

The contents of the Tables 1 and 2 are heartening in providing relatively consistent positive effects in rigorous studies for replicable, pragmatic interventions for struggling students, a population of great substantive importance. Because paraprofessionals are relatively inexpensive and usually poorly utilized in their current roles, providing them with good training materials and software to work with individuals and small groups of students in dire need of help in reading and math just makes good sense.

However, think back to the criticisms so often thrown at evidence-based reform in general. The findings from tutoring and small-group teaching studies devastates those criticisms:

Nothing works. Really? Not everything works, and it would be nice to have a larger set of positive examples. But tutoring by paraprofessionals (and also by teachers and well-supervised and trained volunteers) definitely works, over and over. There are numerous other programs also proven to work in rigorous studies.
Nothing replicates. Really? Context matters, but here we have relatively consistent findings across the U.S. and England, two very different systems. The effects vary for one-to-one and small-group tutoring, reading and math, and other factors, and we can learn from this variation. But it is clear that across very different contexts, positive effects do replicate.
Nothing scales. Really? Various proven forms of tutoring – by teachers, paraprofessionals, and volunteers – are working right now in schools across the U.S., U.K., and many other countries. Reading Recovery alone, a one-to-one model that uses certified teachers as tutors, works with thousands of teachers worldwide. With the slightest encouragement, proven tutoring models could be expanded to serve many more schools and students, at modest cost.

Proven tutoring models of all types should be a standard offering for every school. More research is always needed to find more effective and cost-effective strategies. But there is no reason whatsoever not to use what we have now. And I hope this example will help critics of evidence-based reform move on to better arguments.

Unleash the Mighty Paraprofessional

In a recent blog I discussed six free and low-cost things that could be done in American education to produce substantial gains at little or no cost. One of these is particularly easy, perhaps shockingly easy in light of how effective it could be: Make better use of paraprofessionals.

Paraprofessionals, of course, are people without teaching certificates (usually) who work in schools. They are poorly paid and don’t get the respect they deserve, but schools spend an enormous amount on them. About 80 percent of Title I funds are spent on salaries and benefits, and much of this is for paraprofessionals. Non-Title I schools also hire a lot of paraprofessionals. Paraprofessionals do a lot of useful things in schools, such as helping teachers with discipline problems, materials, clean-up, and playground duty. They often circulate in classrooms and help out students having difficulties, and they may sit with students with special needs who need ongoing assistance.

The problem is that several studies in the U.S. and the U.K. have found no achievement benefits for paraprofessionals as they are used today. The famous Tennessee Class Size study compared class sizes of 25 to those of 15 and found that children in the early grades learned more in the smaller classes. Less famous are the results of another comparison in that same study, which found that adding a paraprofessional to a class of 25 added nothing to student learning. Teachers and principals argue that paraprofessionals at least make their jobs easier, and they certainly do. It would be wasteful to have certified teachers spending a lot of their time on bus or cafeteria duty. Yet paraprofessionals could be doing a lot more than freeing up teachers.

In contrast to research on ordinary uses of paraprofessionals, there is a great deal of research on one-to-one and one-to-small-group tutoring models, especially in reading, but also in math. Many of these successful models use paraprofessionals as tutors. The reading models that work are structured and phonetic, and require training and supervising the paraprofessionals, but they can be very effective for struggling readers. Our own research has developed computer-assisted tutoring models in reading that involve students working with each other in pairs. These programs are delivered to groups of 6-8 students at a time by ordinary paraprofessionals (with good training). They can produce particularly strong outcomes.

Paraprofessionals trained and equipped to provide high-quality small-group tutoring can also continue to help out in traditional ways, such as playground, lunch, and bus duty. Times such as the beginning and end of the day and lunchtime are not conducive to tutoring anyway. But paraprofessionals can make a powerful difference tutoring students who are behind in reading and math during appropriate parts of the day.

I’ve written before about paraprofessionals, reporting on two recent U.K. studies once again showing positive effects of tutoring models led by paraprofessionals in reading and math. I bring up this topic again because I think making effective use of paraprofessionals is an outstanding example of how American education could greatly improve outcomes for children at little cost, using the findings of research and development and taking advantage of resources already in the system.

Paraprofessionals are usually capable and motivated individuals who want to make a difference with children. Many of them have college degrees and some even have teaching certificates (for example, their certifications may be from another state). Some paraprofessionals have more qualifications and skills than others, and these would be particularly suited to roles as tutors.

Paraprofessionals in schools serving many minority students are much more likely than teachers to share their students’ ethnicity and language, and are more likely to live in the neighborhood. Given training in proven tutoring models, software, materials, and respect, paraprofessionals can be a mighty force for good in our schools.

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

Six Low-Cost or Free Ways to Make American Education the Best in the World

It does not take a political genius to know that for the foreseeable future, American education is not going to be rescued by a grand influx of new money. Certainly in the near term, the slow economic recovery, gridlock in Washington, and other factors mean that the path to substantial improvement in outcomes is going to be paved not with new gold, but with better use of the gold that’s already there.

No problem.

We already spend a lot of money on education. The task right now is to change how we spend federal, state, and local resources so that more money is spent on programs and practices known to make a difference rather than on investments with zero or unknown impacts on learning. Here are my top six suggestions for how to spend our education resources more effectively. (I’ll go into more details on these in future blogs).

1. Provide incentives for schools and districts to implement programs with strong evidence of effectiveness in competitive grants. In competitive grants in all parts of federal and state government, offer “competitive preference points” for applicants who promise to adopt and effectively implement programs proven to be effective. For example, schools proposing to implement programs identified as having “strong evidence of effectiveness” under the new EDGAR definitions might receive four extra points on a 100-point scale, while those meeting the criteria for “moderate evidence of effectiveness” might receive two points. Readers of this blog have seen me make this recommendation many times. Perfect example: School Improvement Grants for low-achieving schools. Cost: zero.

2. Provide incentives for schools and districts to implement programs with strong evidence of effectiveness in formula grants. The big money in federal and state education funding is in formula grants that go to districts and schools based on, for example, levels of poverty, rather than competitive applications. The classic example is Title I. Schools have great freedom in how they use these funds, so how can they be encouraged to use them in more effective ways? The answer is to provide additional incentive funding if schools or districts commit to using proven programs with their allotted formula funds. For example, if schools agree to use a portion of their (formula-driven) Title I funds on a proven program, they may qualify for additional funds (not from the formula pot). This was the idea behind the Obey-Porter Comprehensive School Reform initiative of the late 1990s, which encouraged thousands of Title I schools to adopt whole-school reform models. Cost: This strategy could be done at a cost of perhaps 1% of the current $15 billion annual Title I budget.

3. Offer commitment to proven programs as an alternative to use of value-added teacher evaluation models. A central part of the current administration’s policies is incentivizing states and districts to adopt teacher evaluation plans that combine principal ratings of teachers with value-added scores based on students’ state reading and math tests. This is a required part of Race to the Top in those states that received this funding, and it is a required element of state applications for a waiver of elements of No Child Left Behind.

In practice, current teacher evaluation policies are intended to do two things. First, they insist that schools identify extremely ineffective teachers and help them find other futures. If done fairly and consistently, few oppose this aspect of teacher evaluation. Principals have evaluated teachers and identified those with serious deficits forever, and I am not arguing against continuing this type of evaluation.

The second purpose of the teacher evaluation policies is to improve teaching and learning for all teachers. This is the expensive and contentious part of the policies; in most states it requires a combination of frequent, structured observation by principals and “value-added” assessments of a given teacher’s students. The technical difficulties of both are substantial, and no study has yet shown any benefit to student learning as a result of going through the whole ordeal.

If the goal is better teaching and learning, why not require that all reform approaches meet the same evidence standards? If a school proposes to use a schoolwide strategy that (unlike current teacher evaluation policies) has strong evidence of effectiveness, the school should be permitted, even encouraged, to suspend aspects of the new model as long as it is implementing proven alternatives with fidelity and good outcomes. Cost: Modest, assuming proven programs are similar in cost to the expensive new teacher evaluation strategies.

4. Train and equip paraprofessionals as tutors. The most common expenditure of Title I funds is on paraprofessionals or aides, educators who do not usually have teaching degrees but perform all sorts of functions within schools other than class teaching. Paraprofessionals can be wonderful and capable people, but evidence in the U.S. and U.K. consistently finds that as they are most commonly used, they make little difference in student learning.

Yet there is also extensive evidence that paraprofessionals can be very effective if
they are trained to provide well-structured one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring to students who are struggling in reading and math. Paraprofessionals are a multi-billion dollar army eager and capable of making more of a difference. Let’s empower them to do so. Cost: Minimal (just training and materials).

5. Encourage schools to use Supplemental Educational Services (SES) funding on proven programs. As part of No Child Left Behind, Title I schools had to use substantial portions of their Title I dollars to provide Supplemental Educational Services (SES) to students in schools failing to meet standards. Study after study has found SES to be ineffective, and expenditures on SES are waning, yet they remain as a significant element of Title I funding, even in states with waivers. If districts could be encouraged to use SES funds on programs with evidence of effectiveness in improving achievement (such as training paraprofessionals and teachers to be tutors in reading and/or math), outcomes are sure to improve. Cost: Minimal.

6. Invest in research and development to identify effective uses of universal access to tablets or computers. Despite economic and political hard times, schools everywhere are moving rapidly toward providing universal, all-student access to tablets or computers. There is a lot of talk about blended learning, flipped learning, and so on, but little actual research and development is going on that is likely to identify effective and replicable classroom strategies likely to make good use of these powerful tools. As it has done many times before, American education is about to spend billions on technology without first knowing which applications actually work. Setting aside a tiny percentage of the costs of the hardware and software, we could fund many innovators to create and rigorously evaluate approaches using all-student technology access, before we get stuck on ineffective solutions (again). Cost: modest.

* * *

I’m sure there are many more ways we could shift existing funds to advance
American education, but they all come down to one common recommendation: use what works. Collectively, the six strategies I’ve outlined, and others like them, could catapult American education to the top on international comparisons, greatly reduce education gaps, and prepare our students for the demands of a technological economy, all at little or no net cost, if we’re willing to also stop making ineffective investments. Moreover, all of these six prescriptions could be substantially underway in the next two years, during the remainder of the current administration. All could be done by the Department of Education alone, without congressional action. And again, I’m sure that others have many other examples of low-cost and no-cost solutions that I haven’t thought of or haven’t addressed here.

A revolution in American education does not necessarily require money, but it does require courage, leadership, and resolve. Those are resources our nation has in abundance. Let’s put them to work.

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

Making Effective Use of Paraprofessionals

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in England has just released its first six reports of studies evaluating various interventions. In each case, rigorous, randomized evaluations were done by third parties. As is typical in such studies, most found that treatments did not have significant positive outcomes, but two of them did. Both evaluated different uses of paraprofessionals. In England, as in the U.S., paraprofessionals usually assist teachers in classrooms, helping individual students with problems, helping the teacher with classroom management, and “other duties as assigned.” As in the U.S., teachers, parents, and politicians like paraprofessionals, because they are usually nice, helpful people from the community who free teachers from mundane tasks so the teachers can do what they do best. Unfortunately, research in both countries finds that paraprofessionals make no difference in student learning. The famous Tennessee Class Size study, for example, compared larger and smaller classes, but also had a large-class-with-paraprofessional condition, in which student achievement was precisely the same as it was in the large classes without paraprofessionals.

In one of the recent EEF-funded evaluations, teaching assistants taught struggling secondary readers one-to-one 20 minutes a day for 10 weeks. The study involved 308 middle schoolers randomly assigned to tutoring or ordinary teaching in 19 schools. The tutored students gained significantly more in reading than did controls. Similarly, a studyin which 324 elementary students in 54 schools were randomly assigned to one-to-one tutoring in math or to regular teaching found that the tutored students gained significantly more.

The EEF reports add to a considerable body of research in the U.S. showing that well-trained paraprofessionals can obtain substantial gains with struggling readers in one-to-one and small-group tutoring.

What these findings tell us is crystal clear. Already in our schools we have a powerful but underutilized resource, paraprofessionals who, with training and assistance, could be making a substantial difference in the lives of struggling students. This resource is costing us a lot. Most of the $15 billion we spend on Title I every year is spent on paraprofessionals, as is a lot of state and local funding. From personal experience, paraprofessionals are caring and capable people who want to make a difference. Why not use the evidence to help them do just that?

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