The IES surveyed about 2,400 public K-12 schools across the U.S., and almost half of the schools providing students with high-dosage tutoring cited lack of funding to hire the staff needed to provide such tutoring as a barrier.
High-dosage tutoring—which according to Duke University's Social Science Research Institute is generally defined as tutoring with a frequency of three or more sessions per week of no less than 30 minutes each and a maximum 3:1 student-tutor ratio—is a method that requires specially trained professionals capable of developing a "sustained and strong" relationship with their students.
Faced with a lack of trained professionals, North Carolina's Guilford County schools turned to paraprofessionals, graduate students, and tutors from outside organizations to assist their own certified teachers in leading tutoring efforts. The district also partnered with two local universities to boost its team of tutors.
To tackle a similar problem of limited availability of trained tutors, the Dallas Independent School District in Texas announced efforts to recruit more retired teachers to expand school-hour tutoring.
Besides money, incorporating high-dosage tutoring also requires time. A statewide tutoring initiative in Tennessee, encompassing 87 districts with more than 200,000 students, seeks to address the issue of the timing of in-school tutoring services. Having suffered from consistently low participation rates when scheduled for after-school hours, the state's tutoring efforts are now offered during school hours, which has helped reach many more students while not requiring them to sacrifice extracurricular activities.
School districts have devised ingenious solutions to some of the most common barriers to successful tutoring programs. Beyond solving for the pandemic-induced learning losses, improving student achievement makes good sense.
Story editing by Brian Budzynski. Copy editing by Paris Close.
This story originally appeared on HeyTutor and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.