Schools Must Do the Hard Work If High-Dosage Tutoring Is to Help Every Student
The 74 | By Christina Grant & Kevin Huffman |
Grant & Huffman: Effective programs aren’t about finding a silver bullet. They’re about building reliable systems that work for kids every day.
There is a temptation in education to abandon projects rapidly and instead chase a new solution as a magic bullet for improving student outcomes. Too often, when an investment doesn’t have an instant payoff, it’s abandoned for the next shiny thing. New programs, new technology, new slogans, each promising to fix what came before it. But the truth is, no new solution will ever pay off without doing the hard, steady work of diagnosing problems and mastering the fundamentals.
In the post-COVID era, tutoring has faced criticism for mixed results following significant investments to address learning loss. This comes despite a significant body of research that shows high-dosage tutoring yields, on average, a learning gain of one-third of a grade level per year, with the potential for a full extra year of learning over three years.
So, what gives?
Programs falter when implementation becomes an afterthought. Between 2022 and 2024, school systems invested billions of dollars in high-dosage tutoring to address COVID-era learning loss. But states and districts often lacked the data infrastructure to track participation and measure student learning impacts, and the federal framework in which they were operating asked for little accountability. This left many states floundering, rapidly trying to deliver services to students without adequate systems to track and manage their data.
Imagine being given eggs, flour and sugar and told to bake a cake, with no measurements and no recipe. Obviously, no matter how talented the baker, the results will be haphazard.
On the other hand, when educators and schools are given the proper tools to implement, measure and scale proven interventions, student learning improves.
Christina’s experience as school superintendent in Washington, D.C. shows what can happen when clear recipes, accurate measurements and the right ingredients are built in from the start. From day one, every dollar invested in D.C.’s high-impact tutoring initiative was backed by a carefully designed research and evaluation framework — not just to measure academic progress, but to track attendance and social-emotional growth as well. By forging strong partnerships with top researchers and treating evidence as essential, not optional, the district was able to see and respond to real-time results. Student “pulse check” surveys — administered periodically throughout the program — showed consistently positive, and in some cases improving, ratings of their relationships with tutors and sense of belonging at school.
Early findings showed that students who participated in tutoring not only exceeded their expected growth by an additional 44%, but also attended several more days of school than peers who were not tutored — a breakthrough for children most at risk of chronic absenteeism. Focusing on the fundamentals of implementation and measurement paid huge dividends, allowing D.C. to truly understand the wide-ranging impacts of the tutoring program. It was a big bet on students, but one anchored in research and built on a foundation of ongoing data collection and continuous improvement. This wasn’t about chasing the latest trend; it was about weaving research and practice together so that every step could be measured, continuously improved and ultimately scaled to reach more students.
Programs that deliver real results do the disciplined, unglamorous work of implementation: scheduling tutoring during the school day rather than after hours; providing tutors with real training and support; tracking attendance and participation daily; and solving logistical problems as soon as they emerge.
It’s also important to ensure investments in tutoring are linked to results through outcomes-based contracts with providers. To administer Florida’s statewide tutoring program, the University of Florida Lastinger Center utilizes outcomes-based contracting so there is mutual accountability for student performance. Tutoring providers receive a base payment of 60% of the total contract amount to deliver the services. The remaining 40% is tied to outcomes of participating students. This encourages a quality-over-quantity approach, so tutors can focus on improving outcomes through meaningful sessions, rather than checking a box.
Effective high-impact tutoring isn’t about finding a silver bullet or chasing magical new programs. It’s about building reliable systems that work for students every day. Clear guidance, like the toolkit developed by our teams at Accelerate and the Strategic Data Project at Harvard University, help districts understand how to define and track who receives tutoring and how much of it is happening, and ultimately implement effective programs.
Using toolkits like this one allows leaders to ensure that dollars are directed toward what works. It also gives leaders real-time, data-backed insights into what’s working and what isn’t, so they can invest money in solutions that work and redirect funds from strategies that aren’t connecting with students. As with any other smart investment, the benefits of steady, consistent improvement grow over time.
To make sure solutions like high-dosage tutoring have real impact, education leaders need to commit to the hard, necessary work of asking basic questions about the student experience, implementing rigorous measurement tools and focusing relentlessly on student outcomes. Every day, students are asked to try their hardest and give us their best. All of us — educators, policymakers and researchers — have to hold ourselves to the same standard.
