The movement to democratize tutoring
Liz Cohen on why tutoring is the most effective academic intervention and how other states are offering to families who can't pay for it
I am excited to share today research on the movement to democratize tutoring. States like Louisiana are offering tutoring not only during the school day, but also through vouchers for low-income families to pay for outside tutors.
You can buy her book “The Future of Tutoring” here.
Last year, 50CAN asked a national sample of parents if their child had received academic tutoring in the previous school year. The percentage of parents who said yes was quite clearly related to income: 35% of parents making more than $500,000 had a child in tutoring compared with only 15% of parents making less than $100,000. No real surprise here–tutoring is expensive!
Meanwhile, as many as 10,000 school districts launched tutoring initiatives between 2021 and 2024 as a response to pandemic-era school disruptions. But in most of those schools, the parents often had no idea their child was working with a tutor. Some school leaders told me they would tell parents about their tutoring program to ensure better attendance on tutoring days, but it was far from a consistent practice.
Part of what is compelling about the high-impact tutoring movement that emerged in the immediate post-pandemic years is that it allowed low-income students to access the kind of personalized academic support that their higher-income peers have leveraged for years. High-impact tutoring is when the tutoring takes place at least three times a week, for at least thirty minutes, with no more than four students working with a consistent adult. Ideally, what students work on in the tutoring sessions is connected to what they’re learning in the classroom, though there’s some flexibility, for example with early literacy and math skills. Technological advances are part of what’s made this possible, including the expansion of broadband internet and important evidence that virtual tutoring can be as effective as in-person tutoring. One-time federal funds certainly jumpstarted this trend, with tutoring the most common solution to learning loss adopted by schools. But even with thousands of schools trying out tutoring, too many students still don’t have access to the most effective academic intervention that exists.
When I started my research into the post-pandemic tutoring movement, the focus was on schools and districts that were investing time and resources to build tutoring programs inside the school day. That work is exciting, impactful, and continues even now. But one of the reasons why offering tutoring inside the school day is novel is because it allows students to participate who might otherwise never be able to access that kind of personalized academic support. As that 50CAN survey showed, parents who can afford it are paying for tutoring outside of school in high numbers. By 2022, more than 10,000 private tutoring centers were operating in the United States, primarily in high-income zip codes. When I recently interviewed Brown University economist Matt Kraft about the future of tutoring, he told me he hopes the future is that “we have democratized access to individualized instruction in a way that it’s not only available to families in the private market who can afford it.”
I couldn’t agree more with Kraft–democratizing access to individualized instruction is the real promise of tutoring, and precisely what, for example, the state of Louisiana is doing, both with their robust high-impact tutoring program currently serving more than 240,000 students and with the Steve Carter Tutoring program, which provides $1500 vouchers to eligible families to pay for out-of-school tutoring with approved providers. William Minton is the CEO and founder of Canopy Ed, one of the largest providers of Steve Carter-funded tutoring, serving almost 2,000 students last year. Canopy hires teachers to work as tutors, paying up to $60/hour, with the idea that teachers can build on existing relationships between families and schools. No teacher works with her own students, but with students from other classrooms, building more bonds between students, families, and the school as a whole.
Minton explained that payment also depends on students showing up to tutoring, not just signing up. One of the biggest challenges in high-impact tutoring programs is getting students the amount of tutoring (the dosage) required to yield results. Companies like Canopy mitigate this challenge by incentivizing the tutor to engage with families to ensure the students show up. Focusing on school partnerships also helps–instead of arranging a separate trip to a tutoring center, parents can simply come to school a bit later to collect their child. According to Minton, there are multiple beneficiaries to this program: the students who learn more and feel more engaged in learning, the families who feel empowered to procure tutoring for their child, the teachers who earn desirable additional income, and the entire community that benefits from the virtuous cycle of those first three wins. Would more states follow Louisiana’s lead? When we don’t offer the most effective tool we have to students who need help, it’s hard to imagine we ever truly change outcomes for all children. Districts like New York City may spend more than $30,000 per student on average, but does it matter if the average student isn’t learning all they should or could?
For parents wondering whether your child has access to publicly-funded high-quality tutoring, here are two questions to ask your school:
Do we have a high-impact tutoring program? If so, which students participate? Is my child eligible?
If my child isn’t eligible or we don’t have a high-impact tutoring program, what is your plan for ensuring my child is learning on grade level?
I’d love for every school to answer, “yes, we have high-impact tutoring!” But what’s even more critical is that each school has a plan for supporting every child to academic success. Too many schools have never been asked to articulate their instructional strategy; too many students languish in classrooms where teachers and principals simply hope what they’re doing works. The evidence behind high-impact tutoring, on the other hand, is significant. Students gain months of additional learning, attend school more regularly, and often become more engaged in their own learning. After a summer tutoring program in New Jersey, for example, 82% of students said they were more likely to now participate in their regular math class because of tutoring. That’s on top of the average four-month gain of additional learning that researchers found after analyzing 89 separate tutoring research studies.
In 1900, renowned education reformer John Dewey wrote that “what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children.” In 2025, what everyone wants is tutoring; let’s provide access for as many children as possible.
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