Launching ProvenTutoring

Today, my colleagues and I are launching www.ProvenTutoring.org. The purpose of this website is to help make certain that the opportunities made available by the American Rescue Plan and other funding actually have their intended impact on the school success of America’s children.

Websites are launched every day. Why is this one special? ProvenTutoring.org introduces the ProvenTutoring Coalition, a collaboration among 14 established tutoring programs, each of which has strong evidence of its effectiveness. Together, we are capable of disseminating proven tutoring on an unprecedented scale. Collectively, our goal is to serve 100,000 tutors throughout the U.S. with top-quality materials, software, and professional development. These 100,000 tutors, some working one-to-one and some one-to-small group (up to one to five), should be able to provide proven tutoring services to about four million children each year. Each of us has prepared ambitious scale-up plans to accomplish this. We can create the capacity to meet the obvious need. Our website is intended to help districts and schools locate and adopt proven, ready-to-go strategies appropriate to their children’s needs.

What we are doing has never been attempted before in the history of American education. The federal government, along with enlightened state and local governments, is making available substantial resources to combat COVID learning losses, or “unfinished learning.” That kind of thing has happened before. Governments are making recommendations for effective use of the money, more or less based on research. That has happened before. State and local educational leaders are scrambling to figure out how to make wise use of these resources. That has happened before.

But never before has government had available a set of proven, scalable solutions to the educational problems it is trying to solve. Not just general principles, but specific, proven, scalable solutions. If a state or local superintendent calls us, we will show up, and can offer multiple options, each of which is known to be effective at improving student learning.

It has long been known that tutoring is the most effective strategy for accelerating the learning of students struggling in reading and math. Every educator knows this, of course, because when their own children are struggling in school, they get them a tutor. The research just provides evidence to back up common sense. Not all tutoring is effective; it does matter how you do it, which is why it is essential that educators use proven approaches. But “tutoring works” is not big news.

Why, then, is tutoring not universal for students who need it?

1. Too expensive? Not anymore. At one time tutoring was thought to require a certified teacher and one-to-one. Yet there are now effective programs that use well-trained teaching assistants with college degrees and one-to-small group tutoring, at costs starting at $600 per student per year. And the American Rescue Plan and other funding now make it possible for schools to afford even the most expensive one-to-one programs.
2. Not available? Not anymore. By training tutors hired locally, quality tutoring programs can operate anywhere. Tutoring should be in-person, if at all possible, but online professional development can make tutoring available anywhere (and tutoring can, of course, be offered online if necessary).
3. Nothing succeeds at scale in education innovation? Not anymore. It is true that educational innovations that succeed at small scale all too often fail in scale-up. Yet the reason for failure at scale is that to go to scale, programs often have to reduce professional development, materials, and standards of implementation. Yet each member of ProvenTutoring has made a commitment to provide the amount and quality of service they did in the studies that established their effectiveness. Most programs in our coalition have worked in hundreds, some in thousands of schools coast to coast, outside of research.

For Whom Does This Matter?

If you are a parent, teacher, principal, superintendent, board member, or just a member of the public interested in quality education for all children, ProvenTutoring should matter to you. Knowing that American Rescue Plan money is flowing in large part to fund proven programs known to substantially improve learning should make you happy.

If you are concerned about equity in America, ProvenTutoring should matter to you. The students who have suffered most from COVID school closures are disadvantaged and minority students, increasing gaps that already existed. The impact of ProvenTutoring will help in narrow these gaps by moving struggling students toward grade level in reading and math, and this will have a particular benefit for disadvantaged and minority students.

If you are concerned about America’s place in the world economy, ProvenTutoring should matter to you. The mediocre performance of U.S. students on international assessment (like PISA) is mostly due to the number of students scoring at the lowest levels. The U.S. workforce needs to be capable through and through. ProvenTutoring will help ensure that all students reach their full potential, and that will boost our entire economy and society.

If you believe in evidence-based reform in education, then ProvenTutoring should matter to you. It is the first-ever attempt to use proven programs to move the needle at a national scale, to solve a problem of great national importance and interest. If we can make this work, it will do for education what penicillin did for biology: Out of the lab, into policy and practice. Whatever your area of focus in education, preschool to postgraduate, the success of ProvenTutoring should matter to you as a model of how research-to-practice can happen at scale.

Who Are Our Partners?

            Our partners are listed below. Check out ProvenTutoring.org starting next Monday to learn more about them.

Reading
Program	Grades	Organization
Enhanced Core Reading Instruction	K-2	U. of Oregon
Experience Corps	K-3	AARP
Future Forward	K-2	Education Analytics
Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI)	K-2	Heineman, Fountas & Pinnell
Lindamood-Bell	1-3	Lindamood-Bell
Reading Corps	K-3	Reading & Math, Inc.
Reading Rescue	1	Benedict Silverman Foundation
Targeted Reading Instruction	K-2	U. of North Carolina
Tutoring With the Lightning Squad	K-3	Success for All Foundation
Reading, 3-5/6
ThemeReads	2-5	Success for All Foundation
Tutoring With the Lightning Squad	3-5	Success for All Foundation

Math
Program	Grades	Organization
Galaxy Math	1	Fuchs Math
Number Rockets	2-3	Fuchs Math
Whole Number Foundations (Roots, Fusion)	K-1	U. of Oregon
Math Corps	4-5	Reading & Math, Inc.
Fractions Face-Off	4	Fuchs Math
Pirate Math	3	Fuchs Math
Math Corps	6-8	Reading & Math, Inc.
Saga Math	9-10	Saga

            We are looking forward to working with federal, state, and local leaders, and with everyone with a stake in children’s success, to see that this extraordinary opportunity to make a substantial difference in the school success of millions of children will prevail. Please join us in this enterprise!

Photo credit: NASA

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. 

Prioritize Tutoring for Low-Achieving Readers

In speaking and writing about tutoring, I am often asked about where limited tutoring resources should be concentrated.  My answer is this: “Make certain that every single child in America who needs it gets enough tutoring to be proficient in phonics. All other priorities are tied for second place.”

There are many pragmatic reasons why early reading should be the focus. First, the largest number of proven tutoring programs focus on grades K-2 or K-3 reading, and these programs tend to have spectacular impacts on measures of reading comprehension as well as phonics. Second, reading is fundamental. Very few students end up in special education, or are held back in grade, due to failure in any other subject, for example. Most other subjects depend on reading, of course. But also, a student’s academic self-esteem depends primarily on his or her self-perception as a reader.

Note that “early reading” in this case does not only mean reading in grades K-3. The great majority of students who are failing in reading in grades 4-12 do not have solid phonics skills, typically taught in grades K-2. There are no proven middle school reading programs in the U.S., but there are two in England, and both were adapted from K-2 programs, with a strong focus on phonics.

My point about focusing on phonics first is influenced by the fact that very poor reading skills (defined here as scoring “below basic” on NAEP) are very widespread, especially among disadvantaged and minority students. On the 2019 4^th grade NAEP, 34% of all students, but 52% of Black students and 45% of Hispanic students, scored below basic. At 8^th grade, it’s 27% below basic for all, 46% for Black students, and 37% for Hispanic students. Using these numbers, I’d estimate that 9.5 million elementary and 7.3 million secondary students are scoring below basic on NAEP reading, and surely need tutoring. While we wait for someone to create and evaluate secondary reading tutoring programs, could we start with the 9.5 million elementary students? This is a mighty big job in itself. We could also use proven upper-elementary tutoring programs to work with some proportion of secondary students reading far below grade level.

Even leaving aside the importance of immediate capacity, demonstrated impact, and the obvious importance of reading in elementary schools, consider the huge role of the reading gap on the most important social problem in our nation: Inequality by race and social class. In large part, racial and social class disparities cause the reading gap, but they are also caused by reading gaps. And it is possible to close the reading gaps, alongside other efforts focusing on closing economic, housing, criminal justice, and other gaps. If we made sure that every American child could read at the fifth grade level by fifth grade, the reading gap would be no longer be a major problem.

The numbers I have been citing are from 2019, before the pandemic. Now things are much worse, and there are surely a lot more than 9.5 million elementary students and 7.3 million secondary students who would score below “basic” on NAEP. Fortunately, the American Rescue Plan Act is providing substantial resources to combat Covid learning losses, and low achievement in general. Covid or no Covid, we have an opportunity and a clear pressing need to close the reading gap and provide a strong foundation for reading for today’s students.

Note that I do not mean to minimize the importance of mathematics, or of secondary school reading and math. These are crucial as well, and we need to solve these problems too. But first out of the gate, in 2021-2022, let’s make sure we use the proven tools we have at hand to solve the problem we happen to be best placed to solve, which happens to be the most important educational problem we face at this moment.

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. 

Getting Proven Tutoring Programs Into Widespread Practice

Over the past 20 years, there has been a major increase in the number of educational programs that have been developed, evaluated in rigorous (usually randomized) experiments, found to make a substantial difference in achievement, and then offered to schools by non-profit or for-profit organizations. Educators can easily find out about these proven programs in the federal What Works Clearinghouse, our own Evidence for ESSA website, and other sources. Yet very few of these, no matter how effective, have been widely adopted by schools. In 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) defined what it means for a program to have strong, moderate, or promising evidence of effectiveness, and encouraged or even (in some cases) incentivized use of these programs. Yet even with this, few of the roughly 120,000 U.S. elementary and secondary schools regularly use any of the more than 120 proven reading or mathematics programs that meet the requirements of Evidence for ESSA and show significant positive effects.

The evidence-to-practice connection in education is much in contrast to that in, say, medicine, where medications and treatments of all kinds that have proven in rigorous experiments that they can cure or prevent diseases are usually widely adopted by medical practitioners. The recent, rapid development and successful evaluations of Covid-19 vaccines are much in the news right now, but dozens of new drugs and other treatments are validated every year, and are then adopted widely. It is certainly true that vastly more money is invested in the whole evidence-to-practice process in medicine than is true in education, but even when educational programs are found effective in randomized experiments like those required in medicine, these programs rarely enter large-scale use. Further, evidence-to-practice is common in many other fields, such as agriculture and technology. But not education.

How Tutoring Might Change Evidence-to-Practice in Education

One of the problems of evidence-to-practice in education is that we lack clear examples where programs were proven effective and then universally applied and found effective at scale. For example, evidence-to-practice was haphazard in medicine until the 20^th century, when sulfa drugs, penicillin, morphine, and cures for polio, among many others, solved massive societal problems, and established the idea that research in medicine could truly bring about major change. These breakthroughs were explicitly engineered to solve health problems of great concern to the public, just as the Covid-19 vaccines were explicitly engineered to solve the pandemic.

In education, we face similar problems in the post-Covid period. Millions of students have fallen far behind due to the closure of their schools. All sorts of solutions have been proposed, but only one, tutoring, has both a solid and substantial research base and a significant number of proven, practical, cost-effective solutions.

Perhaps this is our penicillin/polio/Covid moment. We face a problem that no one can deny, of a desperate need to enable millions of students who have lost ground in the pandemic to rapidly gain in reading and math achievement. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) has provided billions of dollars to solve the problem, so for once, lack of money is not an obstacle. Due to developments in educational research over the past 20 years, we now have a set of tutoring models that have been proven effective in randomized experiments. If these programs can be rapidly scaled up and applied to enough students to make a meaningful difference among struggling students nationwide, then this may serve as the example we need to establish that development, research, and dissemination can solve societal problems in education.

ProvenTutoring

My colleagues and I are organizing a demonstration exactly along these lines. Fourteen proven tutoring programs for reading and mathematics have formed a coalition, which we call ProvenTutoring. The purpose of the coalition is to make the case for proven tutoring programs, and then provide schools, districts, and states a choice of proven programs. Whichever programs are selected will then provide tutors with first-class professional development to ensure that tutoring is done well and that students receive the maximum benefit possible.

The fourteen programs had to be proven to succeed with college-educated teaching assistants as tutors (because requiring certified teachers would be impossible in a time of teacher shortages, and because evidence finds that well-supported teaching assistants get results as good as those obtained by certified teachers). Each program had to have capacity to go to substantial scale. We estimate that we can collectively serve 100,000 tutors who can serve about four million children, if all goes well.

ProvenTutoring will soon launch a website (which we will call ProvenTutoring.org) and a nationwide communications campaign to focus schools on proven tutoring as a key part of their post Covid-19 plans to combat learning losses. We will offer school districts webinars on proven tutoring, and allow users to explore specific programs to make informed choices among them. We will maintain rigorous standards of training and implementation, to make sure that the quality of implementation in practice, at scale, will be no less than the quality of implementation in the controlled experiments that established their impact.

How Successful Tutoring Could Lead to Support for Evidence-to-Practice

When districts, states, and the nation evaluate reading and math outcomes of struggling students in schools that adopted proven tutoring programs, in comparison to schools that used their ARPA money on other approaches, the outcomes should be clear. If they are, this will be a wonderful development for struggling students, and a major boost for tutoring as an intervention. However, it may also provide the example educational research needs to establish its capacity to solve big practical problems.

If ProvenTutoring is as effective as we expect, perhaps it will occur to our profession that this same strategy could apply wherever we want. This could lead to accelerated investment by government in development and evaluation of replicable programs in every crucial area of education, where robust solutions are needed. Someday, could there be ProvenAlgebra.org? ProvenScience.org? ProvenGraduation.org? Proven programs for English learners? ProvenPreschool.org? ProvenClassroomManagement.org? ProvenCivics.org? Whatever problems most need to be solved, there is no reason we cannot solve them using the same evidence-to-practice strategies that medicine, agriculture, and other fields have used so successfully for many decades.

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

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 Role of Research and Development in Post-Covid Education

Everyone knows that during World War II, the pace of innovation greatly accelerated. Computers, rocketry, jets, sonar, radar, microwaves, aerosol cans, penicillin, and morphine were among the many wartime developments. What unites these innovations, of course, is that each was developed to solve an urgent problem important to the war effort, and all of them later tuned out to have revolutionary benefits for civilian use. Yet these advances could not have taken place so quickly if not for the urgent need for innovations and the massive resources devoted to them.

Crisis can be the catalyst for innovation.

Today, we face Covid, a dire medical crisis, and investments of massive resources have produced vaccines in record time. However, the Covid pandemic has also created an emergency in education, as millions of children are experiencing educational losses due to school closures. The Institute for Education Sciences (IES) has announced a grants program to respond to the Covid crisis, but at the usual pace, the grants will only lead to practical solutions in many years when (we fervently hope) the crisis will be over.

I would argue that in this perilous time, research in education should focus on urgent practical problems that could have a significant impact within, say, the next year or two on the problems of students who are far below grade level in essential skills because of Covid school closures, or for other reasons:

1. Tutoring. Yes, of course I was going to start with tutoring. The biggest problem in tutoring is that while we have many proven programs for elementary reading, especially for grades K-3, we have far fewer proven programs ready for prime time in the upper elementary grades, and none at all in middle or high school reading. Studies in England have found positive effects of tutoring in their equivalent of middle school, but none of these exist in the U.S. In mathematics, there are few proven tutoring programs in elementary school, and just one I know of for middle school, and one for high school.

How could research funding produce new tutoring programs for middle and high school reading, and for math at all grade levels, in such a short time?  Simple. First, there are already tutoring programs for reading and math at all grade levels, but few have been successfully evaluated, or (in most cases) ever evaluated at all in rigorous experiments. So it would be important to fund evaluations of particularly promising programs that are already working at significant scale.

Another means of rapidly discovering effective tutoring programs would be to fund programs that have been successful in certain grade levels to quickly create programs for adjacent grades. For example, a program proven effective in grades 2-3 should be able to be significantly modified to work in grades 4-5. One that works in grades 4-5 could be modified for use in middle school. Programs proven effective in reading might be modified for use in mathematics at the same grade level, or vice versa. Many programs with successful programs in some grade levels have the staff and experience to quickly create programs in adjacent grade levels.

Also, it might be possible for developers of successful classwide technology programs to create and pilot tutoring models using similar software, but adding the assistance of a tutor for groups of one to four students, perhaps in collaboration with experts on tutoring.

2. Approaches other than tutoring.  There are many effective reading and math programs of all kinds, not just tutoring, that have proven their effectiveness (see www.evidenceforessa.org). Such programs might be ready to go as they are, and others could be evaluated in a form appropriate to the current emergency. Very few programs other than tutoring obtain effect sizes like those typical of the best tutoring programs, but classwide programs with modest effect sizes serve many more students than tutoring programs do. Also, classroom programs might be evaluated for their capacity to maintain gains made due to tutoring.

Tutoring or non-tutoring programs that already exist at scale, or that could be quickly adapted from proven programs, might be ready for rigorous, third-party evaluations as soon as fall, 2021. These programs should be evaluated using rigorous, third-party evaluations, with all programs at a given grade level using identical procedures and measures. In this way, it should be possible to have many new, proven programs by the end of the 2021-2022 school year, ready for dissemination in fall, 2022. This would be in time to greatly add capacity to serve the millions of students who need proven programs to help them make rapid progress toward grade level.

A research program of this kind could be expensive, and it may not provide theoretical breakthroughs. However, given the substantial and obvious need, and the apparent willingness of government to provide major resources to combat Covid learning losses, such a research effort might be feasible. If it were to take place, it might build excitement about R & D as a practical means of enhancing student achievement. And if even a quarter of the experiments found sizable positive impacts, this would add substantially to our armamentarium of proven strategies for struggling students.

There is an old saying in social work: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” As in World War II, the educational impacts of the Covid pandemic present educational research with a crisis that we must solve, but if we can solve any portion of this problem, this will create benefits for generations of children long after Covid has faded into a distant memory.

Photo credit: User Messybeast on en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

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. 

Avoiding the Errors of Supplemental Educational Services (SES)

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.” –Albert Einstein

Last Friday, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives passed a $1.9 trillion recovery bill. Within it is the Learning Recovery Act (LRA). Both the overall bill and the Learning Recovery Act are timely and wonderful. In particular, the LRA emphasizes the importance of using research-based tutoring to help students who are struggling in reading or math. The linking of evidence to large-scale federal education funding began with the 2015 ESSA definition of proven educational programs, and the LRA would greatly increase the importance of evidence-based practices.

But if you sensed a “however” coming, you were right. The “however” is that the LRA requires investments of substantial funding in “school extension programs,” such as “summer school, extended day, or extended school year programs” for vulnerable students.

This is where the Einstein quote comes in. “School extension programs” sound a lot like Supplemental Educational Services (SES), part of No Child Left Behind that offered parents and children an array of services that had to be provided after school or in summer school.

The problem is, SES was a disaster. A meta-analysis of 28 studies of SES by Chappell et al. (2011) found a mean effect size of +0.04 for math and +0.02 for reading. A sophisticated study by Deke et al. (2014) found an effect size of +0.05 for math and -0.03 for reading. These effect sizes are just different flavors of zero. Zero was the outcome whichever way you looked at the evidence, with one awful exception: The lowest achievers, and special education students, actually performed significantly less well in the Deke et al. (2014) study if they were in SES than if they qualified but did not sign up. The effect sizes for these students were around -0.20 for reading and math. Heinrich et al. (2009) also reported that the lowest achievers were least likely to sign up for SES, and least likely to attend regularly if they did. All three major studies found that outcomes did not vary much depending on which type of provider or program they received. Considering that the per-pupil cost was estimated at $1,725 in 2021 dollars, these outcomes are distressing, but more important is the fact that despite the federal government’s willingness to spend quite a lot on them, millions of struggling students in desperate need of effective assistance did not benefit.

Why did SES fail? I have two major explanations. Heinrich et al. (2009), who added questionnaires and observations to find out what was going on, discovered that at least in Milwaukee, attendance in SES after-school programs was appalling (as I reported in my previous blog). In the final year studied, only 16% of eligible students were attending (less than half signed up at all, and of those, average attendance in the remedial program was only 34%). Worse, the students in greatest need were least likely to attend.

From their data and other studies they cite, Heinrich et al. (2010) paint a picture of students doing boring, repetitive worksheets unrelated to what they were doing in their school-day classes. Students were incentivized to sign up for SES services with incentives, such as iPods, gift cards, or movie passes. Students often attended just enough to get their incentives, but then stopped coming. In 2006-2007, a new policy limited incentives to educationally-related items, such as books and museum trips, and attendance dropped further. Restricting SES services to after-school and summertime, when attendance is not mandated and far from universal, means that students who did attend were in school while their friends were out playing. This is hardly a way to engage students’ motivation to attend or to exert effort. Low-achieving students see after school and summertime as their free time, which they are unlikely to give up willingly.

Beyond the problems of attendance and motivation in extended time, there was another key problem with SES. This was that none of the hundreds of programs offered to students in SES were proven to be effective beforehand (or ever) in rigorous evaluations. And there was no mechanism to find out which of them were working well, until very late in the program’s history. As a result, neither schools nor parents had any particular basis for selecting programs according to their likely impact. Program providers probably did their best, but there was no pressure on them to make certain that students benefited from SES services.

As I noted in my previous blog, evaluations of SES do not provide the only evidence that after school and summer school programs rarely work for struggling students. Reviews of summer school programs by Xie et al. (in press) and of after school programs (Dynarski et al., 2002; Kidron & Lindsay, 2014) have found similar outcomes, always for the same reasons: poor attendance and poor motivation of students in school when they would otherwise have free time.

Designing an Effective System of Services for Struggling Students

There are two policies that are needed to provide a system of services capable of substantially improving student achievement. One is to provide services during the ordinary school day and year, not in after school or summer school. The second is to strongly emphasize the use of programs proven to be highly effective in rigorous research.

Educational services provided during the school day are far more likely to be effective than those provided after school or in the summer. During the day, everyone expects students to be in school, including the students themselves. There are attendance problems during the regular school day, of course, especially in secondary schools, but these problems are much smaller than those in non-school time, and perhaps if students are receiving effective, personalized services in school and therefore succeeding, they might attend more regularly. Further, services during the school day are far easier to integrate with other educational services. Principals, for example, are far more likely to observe tutoring or other services if they take place during the day, and to take ownership for ensuring their effectiveness. School day services also entail far fewer non-educational costs, as they do not require changing bus schedules, cleaning and securing schools more hours each day, and so on.

The problem with in-school services is that they can disrupt the basic schedule. However, this need not be a problem. Schools could designate service periods for each grade level spread over the school day, so that tutors or other service providers can be continuously busy all day. Students should not be taken out of reading or math classes, but there is a strong argument that a student who is far below grade level in reading or math needs a reading or math tutor using a proven tutoring model far more than other classes, at least for a semester (the usual length of a tutoring sequence).

If schools are deeply reluctant to interrupt any of the ordinary curriculum, then they might extend their day to offer art, music, or other subjects during the after-school session. These popular subjects might attract students without incentives, especially if students have a choice of which to attend. This could create space for tutoring or other services during the school day. A schedule like this is virtually universal in Germany, which provides all sports, art, music, theater, and other activities after school, so all in-school time is available for academic instruction.

Use of proven programs makes sense throughout the school day. Tutoring should be the main focus of the Learning Recovery Act, because in this time of emergency need to help students recover from Covid school closures, nothing less will do. But in the longer term, adoption of proven classroom programs in reading, math, science, writing, and other subjects should provide a means of helping students succeed in all parts of the curriculum (see www.evidenceforessa.org).

In summer, 2021, there may be a particularly strong rationale for summer school, assuming schools are otherwise able to open.  The evidence is clear that doing ordinary instruction during the summer will not make much of a difference, but summer could be helpful if it is used as an opportunity to provide as many struggling students as possible in-person, one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring in reading or math.  In the summer, students might receive tutoring more than once a day, every day for as long as six weeks.  This could make a particularly big difference for students who basically missed in-person kindergarten, first, or second grade, a crucial time for learning to read.  Tutoring is especially effective in those grades in reading, because phonics is relatively easy for tutors to teach.  Also, there is a large number of effective tutoring programs for grades K-2.  Early reading failure is very important to prevent, and can be prevented with tutoring, so the summer months may get be just the right time to help these students get a leg up on reading.

The Learning Recovery Act can make life-changing differences for millions of children in serious difficulties. If the LRA changes its emphasis to the implementation of proven tutoring programs during ordinary school times, it is likely to accomplish its mission.

SES served a useful purpose in showing us what not to do. Let’s take advantage of these expensive lessons and avoid repeating the same errors. Einstein would be so proud if we heed his advice.

Correction

My recent blog, “Avoiding the Errors of Supplemental Educational Services,” started with a summary of the progress of the Learning Recovery Act.  It was brought to my attention that my summary was not correct.  In fact, the Learning Recovery Act has been introduced in Congress, but is not part of the current reconciliation proposal moving through Congress and has not become law. The Congressional action cited in my last blog was referring to a non-binding budget resolution, the recent passage of which facilitated the creation of the $1.9 trillion reconciliation bill that is currently moving through Congress. Finally, while there is expected to be some amount of funding within that current reconciliation bill to address the issues discussed within my blog, reconciliation rules will prevent the Learning Recovery Act from being included in the current legislation as introduced.

References

Chappell, S., Nunnery, J., Pribesh, S., & Hager, J. (2011). A meta-analysis of Supplemental Education Services (SES) provider effects on student achievement. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 16 (1), 1-23.

Deke, J., Gill, B. Dragoset, L., & Bogen, K. (2014). Effectiveness of supplemental educational services. Journal of Research in Educational Effectiveness, 7, 137-165.

Dynarski, M. et al. (2003). When schools stay open late: The national evaluation of the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers Programs (First year findings). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Heinrich, C. J., Meyer, R., H., & Whitten, G. W. (2010). Supplemental Education Services under No Child Left Behind: Who signs up and what do they gain? Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 32, 273-298.

Kidron, Y., & Lindsay, J. (2014). The effects of increased learning time on student academic and nonacademic outcomes: Findings from a meta‑analytic review (REL 2014-015). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia.

Xie, C., Neitzel, A., Cheung, A., & Slavin, R. E. (2020). The effects of summer programs on K-12 students’ reading and mathematics achievement: A meta-analysis. Manuscript submitted for publication.

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. 

Building Back Better

Yesterday, President Joe Biden took his oath of office. He is taking office at one of the lowest points in all of American history. Every American, whatever their political beliefs, should be wishing him well, because his success is essential for the recovery of our nation.

In education, most schools remain closed or partially open, and students are struggling with remote learning. My oldest granddaughter is in kindergarten. Every school day, she receives instruction from a teacher she has never met. She has never seen the inside of “her school.” She is lucky, of course, because she has educators as grandparents (us), but it is easy to imagine the millions of kindergartners who do not even have access to computers, or do not have help in learning to read and learning mathematics. These children will enter first grade with very little of the background they need, in language and school skills as well as in content.

Of course, the problem is not just kindergarten. All students have missed a lot of school, and they will vary widely in their experiences during that time. Think of second graders who essentially missed first grade. Students who missed the year when they are taught biology. Students who missed the fundamentals of creative writing. Students who should be in Algebra 2, except that they missed Algebra 1.

Hopefully, providing vaccines as quickly as possible to school staffs will enable most schools to open this spring. But we have a long, long way to go to get back to normal, especially with disadvantaged students. We cannot just ask students on their first day back to open their math books to the page they were on in March, 2020, when school closed.

Students need to be assessed when they return, and if they are far behind in reading or math, given daily tutoring, one-to-one or one-to-small group. If you follow this blog, you’ve heard me carry on at length about this.

Tutoring services, using tutoring programs proven to be effective, will be of enormous help to students who are far behind grade level (here, here, here). But the recovery from Covid-19 school closures should not be limited to repairing the losses. Instead, I hope the Covid-19 crisis can be an opportunity to reconsider how to rebuild our school system to enhance the school success of all students.

If we are honest with ourselves, we know that schooling in America was ailing long before Covid-19. It wasn’t doing so badly for middle class children, but it was failing disadvantaged students. These very same students have suffered disproportionately from Covid-19. So in the process of bringing these children back into school, let’s not stop with getting back to normal. Let’s figure out how to create schools that use the knowledge we have gained over the past 20 years, and knowledge we can develop in the coming years, to transform learning for our most vulnerable children.

Building Back Better

Obviously, the first thing we have to do this spring is reopen schools and make them as healthy, happy, welcoming, and upbeat as possible. We need to make sure that schools are fully staffed and fully equipped. We do need to “build back” before we can “build back better.” But we cannot stop there. Below, I discuss several things that would greatly transform education for disadvantaged students.

1.  Tutoring

Yes, tutoring is the first thing we have to do to build better. Every child who is significantly below grade level needs daily one-to-small group or one-to-one tutoring, until they reach a pre-established level of performance, depending on grade level, in reading and math.

However, I am not talking about just any tutoring. Not all tutoring works. But there are many programs that have been proven to work, many times. These are the tutoring programs we need to start with as soon as possible, with adequate training resources to ensure student success.

Implementing proven tutoring programs on a massive scale is an excellent “build back” strategy, the most effective and cost-effective strategy we have. However, tutoring should also be the basis for a key “build better” strategy

2.  Establishing success as a birthright and ensuring it using proven programs of all kinds.

We need to establish adequate reading and mathematics achievement as the birthright of every child. We can debate about what that level might be, but we must hold ourselves accountable for the success of every child. And we need to accomplish this not just by using accountability assessments and hoping for the best, but by providing proven programs to all students who need them for as long as they need them.

As I’ve pointed out in many blogs (here, here, here), we now have many programs proven effective in rigorous experiments and known to improve student achievement (see www.evidenceforessa.org). Every child who is performing below level, and every school serving many children below grade level, should have resources and knowledge to adopt proven programs. Teachers and tutors need to be guaranteed sufficient professional development and in-class coaching to enable them to successfully implement proven programs. Years ago, we did not have sufficient proven programs, so policy makers kept coming up with evidence-free policies, which have just not worked as intended. But now, we have many programs ready for widespread dissemination. To build better, we have to use these tools, not return to near universal use of instructional strategies, materials, and technology that have never been successfully evaluated. Instead, we need to use what works, and to facilitate adoption and effective implementation of proven programs.

3.  Invest in development and evaluation of promising programs.

How is it that in a remarkably short time, scientists were able to develop vaccines for Covid-19, vaccines that promise to save millions of lives? Simple. We invested billions in research, development, and evaluations of alternative vaccines. Effective vaccines are very difficult to make, and the great majority failed.  But at this writing, two U.S. vaccines have succeeded, and this is a mighty good start. Now, government is investing massively in rigorous dissemination of these vaccines.

Total spending on all of education research dedicated to creating and evaluating educational innovations is a tiny fraction of what has been spent and will be spent on vaccines. But can you imagine that it is impossible to improve reading, math, science, and other outcomes, with clear goals and serious resources? Of course it could be done. A key element of “building better” could be to substantially scale up use of proven programs we have now, and to invest in new development and evaluation to make today’s best obsolete, replaced by better and better approaches. The research and evaluation of tutoring proves this could happen, and perhaps a successful rollout of tutoring will demonstrate what proven programs can do in education.

4.  Commit to Success

Education goes from fad to fad, mandate to mandate, without making much progress. In order to “build better,” we all need to commit to finding what works, disseminating it broadly, and then finding even better solutions, until all children are succeeding. This must be a long-term commitment, but if we are investing adequately and see that we are improving outcomes each year, then it is clear we can do it.            

With a change of administrations, we are going to hear a lot about hope. Hope is a good start, but it is not a plan. Let’s plan to build back better, and then for the first time in the history of education, make sure our solutions work, for all of our children.

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. 

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. 

An Open Letter To President-Elect Biden: A Tutoring Marshall Plan To Heal Our Students

Dear President-Elect Biden:

            Congratulations on your victory in the recent election. Your task is daunting; so much needs to be set right. I am writing to you about what I believe needs to be done in education to heal the damage done to so many children who missed school due to Covid-19 closures.

            I am aware that there are many basic things that must be done to improve schools, which have to continue to make their facilities safe for students and cope with the physical and emotional trauma that so many have experienced. Schools will be opening into a recession, so just providing ordinary services will be a challenge. Funding to enable schools to fulfill their core functions is essential, but it is not sufficient.

            Returning schools to the way they were when they closed last spring will not heal the damage students have sustained to their educational progress. This damage will be greatest to disadvantaged students in high-poverty schools, most of whom were unable to take advantage of the remote learning most schools provided. Some of these students were struggling even before schools closed, but when they re-open, millions of students will be far behind.

            Our research center at Johns Hopkins University studies the evidence on programs of all kinds for students who are at risk, especially in reading (Neitzel et al., 2020) and mathematics (Pellegrini et al., 2020). What we and many other researchers have found is that the most effective strategy for struggling students, especially in elementary schools, is one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring. Structured tutoring programs can make a large difference in a short time, exactly what is needed to help students quickly catch up with grade level expectations.

A Tutoring Marshall Plan

            My colleagues and I have proposed a massive effort designed to provide proven tutoring services to the millions of students who desperately need it. Our proposal, based on a similar idea by Senator Coons (D-Del), would ultimately provide funding to enable as many as 300,000 tutors to be recruited, trained in proven tutoring models, and coached to ensure their effectiveness. These tutors would be required to have a college degree, but not necessarily a teaching certificate. Research has found that such tutors, using proven tutoring models with excellent professional development, can improve the achievement of students struggling in reading or mathematics as much as can teachers serving as tutors.

            The plan we are proposing is a bit like the Marshall Plan after World War II, which provided substantial funding to Western European nations devastated by the war. The idea was to put these countries on their feet quickly and effectively so that within a brief period of years, they could support themselves. In a similar fashion, a Tutoring Marshall Plan would provide intensive funding to enable Title I schools nationwide to substantially advance the achievement of their students who suffered mightily from Covid-19 school closures and related trauma. Effective tutoring is likely to enable these children to advance to the point where they can profit from ordinary grade-level instruction. We fear that without this assistance, millions of children will never catch up, and will show the negative effects of the school closures throughout their time in school and beyond.

            The Tutoring Marshall Plan will also provide employment to 300,000 college graduates, who will otherwise have difficulty entering the job market in a time of recession. These people are eager to contribute to society and to establish professional careers, but will need a first step on that ladder. Ideally, the best of the tutors will experience the joys of teaching, and might be offered accelerated certification, opening a new source of teacher candidates who will have had an opportunity to build and demonstrate their skills in school settings. Like the CCC and WPA programs in the Great Depression, these tutors will not only be helped to survive the financial crisis, but will perform essential services to the nation while building skills and confidence.

            The Tutoring Marshall Plan needs to start as soon as possible. The need is obvious, both to provide essential jobs to college graduates and to provide proven assistance to struggling students.

            Our proposal, in brief, is to ask the U.S. Congress to fund the following activities:

Spring, 2021

• Fund existing tutoring programs to build capacity to scale up their programs to serve thousands of struggling students. This would include funds for installing proven tutoring programs in about 2000 schools nationwide.
• Fund rigorous evaluations of programs that show promise, but have not been evaluated in rigorous, randomized experiments.
• Fund the development of new programs, especially in areas in which there are few proven models, such as programs for struggling students in secondary schools.

Fall, 2021 to Spring, 2022

• Provide restricted funds to Title I schools throughout the United States to enable them to hire up to 150,000 tutors to implement proven programs, across all grade levels, 1-9, and in reading and mathematics. This many tutors, mostly using small-group methods, should be able to provide tutoring services to about 6 million students each year. Schools should be asked to agree to select from among proven, effective programs. Schools would implement their chosen programs using tutors who have college degrees and experience with tutoring, teaching, or mentoring children (such as AmeriCorps graduates who were tutors, camp counselors, or Sunday school teachers).
• As new programs are completed and piloted, third-party evaluators should be funded to evaluate them in randomized experiments, adding to capacity to serve students in grades 1-9. Those programs that produce positive outcomes would then be added to the list of programs available for tutor funding, and their organizations would need to be funded to facilitate preparation for scale-up.
• Teacher training institutions and school districts should be funded to work together to design accelerated certification programs for outstanding tutors.

Fall, 2022-Spring, 2023

• Title I schools should be funded to enable them to hire a total of 300,000 tutors. Again, schools will select among proven tutoring programs, which will train, coach, and evaluate tutors across the U.S. We expect these tutors to be able to work with about 12 million struggling students each year.
• Development, evaluation, and scale-up of proven programs should continue to enrich the number and quality of proven programs adapted to the needs of all kinds of Title I schools.

            The Tutoring Marshall Plan would provide direct benefits to millions of struggling students harmed by Covid-19 school closures, in all parts of the U.S. It would provide meaningful work with a future to college graduates who might otherwise be unemployed. At the same time, it could establish a model of dramatic educational improvement based on rigorous research, contributing to knowledge and use of effective practice. If all goes well, the Tutoring Marshall Plan could demonstrate the power of scaling up proven programs and using research and development to improve the lives of children.

References

Neitzel, A., Lake, C., Pellegrini, M., & Slavin, R. (2020). A synthesis of quantitative research on programs for struggling readers in elementary schools. Available at www.bestevidence.org. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Pellegrini, M., Inns, A., Lake, C., & Slavin, R. (2020). Effective programs in elementary mathematics: A best-evidence synthesis. Available at www.bestevidence.com. Manuscript submitted for publication.

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. 

Healing Covid-19’s Educational Losses: What is the Evidence?

I’ve written several blogs (here, here, here, here, here, and here) on what schools can do when they finally open permanently, to remedy what will surely be serious harm to the educational progress of millions of students. Without doubt, the students who are suffering the most from lengthy school closures are disadvantaged students, who are most likely to lack access to remote technology or regular support when their schools have been closed.

 Recently, there have been several articles circulated in the education press (e.g., Sawchuk, 2020) and newsletters laying out the options schools might consider to greatly improve the achievement of students who lost the most, and are performing far behind grade level.

The basic problem is that if schools simply start off with usual teaching for each grade level, this may be fine for students at or just below grade level, but for those who are far below level, this is likely to add catastrophe to catastrophe. Students who cannot read the material they are being taught, or who lack the prerequisite skills for their grade level, will experience failure and frustration. So the challenge is to provide students who are far behind with intensive, additional services likely to quickly accelerate their progress, so that they can then profit from ordinary, at-grade-level lessons.

In the publications I’ve seen, there have been several solutions frequently put forward. I thought this might be a good time to review the most common prescriptions in terms of their evidence basis in rigorous experimental or quasi-experimental research.

Extra Time

One proposal is to extend the school day or school year to provide additional time for instruction. This sounds logical; if the problem is time out of school, let’s add time in school.

The effects of extra time depend, of course, on what schools provide during that additional time. Simply providing more clock hours in which typical instruction is provided makes little difference. For example, in a large Florida study (Figlio, Holden, & Ozek, 2018), high-poverty schools were given a whole hour every day for a year, for additional reading instruction. This had a small impact on reading achievement (ES=+0.09) at a cost of about $800 per student, or $300,000-$400,000 per school. Also, in a review of research on secondary reading programs by Baye, Lake, Inns & Slavin (2019), my colleagues and I examined whether remedial programs were more effective if they were provided during additional time (one class period a day more than what the control group received for one or more years) or if they were provided during regular class time (the same amount of time the control group also received). The difference was essentially zero. The extra time did not matter. What did matter was what the schools provided (here and here).

After-School Programs

Some sources suggest providing after-school programs for students experiencing difficulties. A review of research on this topic by Kidron & Lindsay (2014) examined effects of after-school programs on student achievement in reading and mathematics. The effects were essentially zero. One problem is that students often did not attend regularly, or were poorly motivated when they did attend.

Summer School

As noted in a recent blog, positive effects of summer school were found only when intensive phonics instruction was provided in grades K or 1, but even in these cases, positive effects did not last to the following spring. Summer school is also very expensive.

Tutoring

By far the most effective approach for students struggling in reading or mathematics is tutoring (see blogs here, here, and here). Outcomes for one-to-one or one-to-small group tutoring average +0.20 to +0.30 in both reading and mathematics, and there are several particular programs that routinely report outcomes of +0.40 or more. Using teaching assistants with college degrees as tutors can make tutoring very cost-effective, especially in small-group programs.

Whole-School Reforms

There are a few whole-school reforms that can have substantial impacts on reading and mathematics achievement. A recent review of our elementary school reform model, Success for All (Cheung et al., 2020), found an average effect size of +0.24 for all students across 17 studies, and an average of +0.54 for low achievers.

A secondary reform model called BARR has reported positive reading and mathematics outcomes for ninth graders (T. Borman et al., 2017)

Conclusion

Clearly, something needs to be done about students returning to in-person education who are behind grade level in reading and/or mathematics. But resources devoted to helping these students need to be focused on approaches proven to work. This is not the time to invest in plausible but unproven programs. Students need the best we have that has been repeatedly shown to work.

References

Baye, A., Lake, C., Inns, A., & Slavin, R. (2019). Effective reading programs for secondary students. Reading Research Quarterly, 54 (2), 133-166.

Borman, T., Bos, H., O’Brien, B. C., Park, S. J., & Liu, F. (2017). i3 BARR validation study impact findings: Cohorts 1 and 2. Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research.

Cheung, A., Xie, C., Zhang, T., Neitzel, A., & Slavin, R. E. (2020). Success for All: A quantitative synthesis of evaluations. Manuscript submitted for publication. (Contact us for a copy.)

Figlio, D. N., Holden, K. L., & Ozek, U. (2018). Do students benefit from longer school days? Regression discontinuity evidence from Florida’s additional hour of literacy instruction. Economics of Education Review, 67, 171-183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.06.003

Kidron, Y., & Lindsay, J. (2014). The effects of increased learning time on student academic and nonacademic outcomes: Findings from a meta‑analytic review (REL 2014-015). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia.

Sawchuk, S. (2020, August 26). Overcoming Covid-19 learning loss. Education Week, 40 (2), 6.

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 as a Solution for School Closure Losses: Is the Idea Taking Hold?

What will America’s schools be like when they reopen in fall, 2020?  There are many things we don’t know, and conditions will vary considerably from state to state and school to school.  To begin with, we need to strengthen our schools, to be sure they have the teachers and administrators and supplies they need to do their essential work.  However, schools will need more than just a return to the status quo.  One thing we can absolutely predict is that millions of children will have fallen far behind in their educational progression. In particular, many elementary students in the early stages of learning reading and mathematics will need effective and rapid assistance tailored to their needs to get back on track.  Dedicated teachers and other educators will do everything in their power to bring students back up to speed, but without additional assistance, it will be very difficult to overcome the losses so many children have experienced.  States and school districts will be struggling economically, so no matter how clearly they understand what needs to be done, they will need help.  Yet at the same time, there will be large numbers of capable people eager to help struggling children who will be on the sidelines, without jobs that enable them to make the difference they want to make.

If you have been following my blogs for the past month or so (here, here, here, and here), you will be aware that I have been writing quite a bit about the idea of recruiting, training, and deploying large numbers of tutors to work in schools that have been closed for many months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  Our research and reviews of research have found that several one-to-one and one-to-small group tutoring approaches that use teaching assistants (usually people with college degrees but not teaching certificates) have demonstrated effect sizes of +0.40 or more, roughly equivalent to five additional months of learning over a school year.  No other type of educational service comes close to these impacts.  My argument has been that in the recession we will be facing when school opens in the fall, it would be good for the economy as well as essential for students to have government fund thousands of tutors to work with students who have fallen far behind grade level in reading or mathematics.

This idea may be taking hold.  For example, the State of Tennessee recently announced a plan to work with Big Brothers, Big Sisters to recruit and train people to serve as tutors, as a response to the school closures (here and here). On May 15, the House of Representatives passed the Heroes Act, which includes substantial additional funding for K-12 education.  This includes “initiatives to reduce education gaps.”  This could certainly include tutoring.  I heard that there was talk in the Senate about funding that could also support tutoring.  None of these federal initiatives are certain, but at this point, what is important is that solutions of this kind are in discussion.

         In addition, other observers are also proposing large-scale tutoring as a solution for the educational damage done by school closures (and as a means of providing essential employment to thousands of recent college graduates otherwise unable to enter the job market).  Jill Barshay wrote about this in a recent article in the Hechinger Report.  Matthew Kraft and Michael Goldstein wrote on the topic in a recent Brookings blog.  Susan Dynarski wrote an op-ed on the proposal in the New York Times.

One concern I have heard expressed about the tutoring plan is that with all the uncertainties about the progression of Covid-19 and plans to re-open schools, it is not clear whether schools will re-open on time or not, and whenever they do open, they may use double sessions or other means to reduce the number of children being taught at a given time, to allow for social distancing within schools.  If neither cures nor vaccines are available by the fall, late or partial school openings are indeed possible.  We and other tutoring providers are developing and piloting distance tutoring models, and are willing to share them with other tutoring providers, should this be necessary.  And if schools do not open in September at all, then the need for intensive solutions such as tutoring are that much greater, whenever schools open.

If large-scale tutoring is to be used as part of recovery plans for schools, then preparations need to be begun as soon as possible, to coordinate the efforts of various providers, and then begin to recruit and train tutors, trainers, and others whose efforts will be needed to make this all work.  It would be wonderful if some number of tutors could be ready to go, starting with the elementary grades, soon after students arrive in school, and then expand services to add capacity to serve additional children in need over the 2020-2021 school year.

In the late 1930s, the extraordinary potential of penicillin to treat wounds and diseases was known by scientists and government officials in Britain, and they knew that war was coming and that penicillin could save millions of lives.  However, no one knew how to mass produce enough penicillin to matter.  The British contracted with an American company to work rapidly on the problem, and by the start of World War II, there was enough penicillin for a start, and massive manufacturing capacity to make more.  In a way, we are in a similar situation with tutoring.  We know what has to be done to provide millions of American children with the most effective service known to put them back on track, and it is clearly going to be necessary to do so.  Yet we have a lot of work to do to make this happen in time.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused great devastation in our economy, our society, and our schools.  There are many things we must do to repair these losses.  In each arena, we have to use the best methods we have to cost-effectively solve problems caused by the crisis.  In our field of education, there are many things that must be done, but tutoring, to ensure that students can catch up to grade level, should be part of this great effort.

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

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.