Tutoring
The ISEE and SSAT tests have long been application staples for private school admissions. The test scores help independent school admissions offices evaluate candidates from different schools and regions with a standard metric. COVID-19 changed many things, however, and college and private school admissions are no exception. During the time when the pandemic disrupted in-person testing for both the ISEE and SSAT, at-home testing was introduced, but some schools also decided to go test optional.…
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In early 2024, initial reports indicated that tutoring might not only help kids catch up academically after the pandemic, but could also combat chronic absenteeism and increase school attendance. More recent research, however, suggests that prediction may have been overly optimistic. Stanford University researchers have been studying Washington, D.C.’s $33 million investment in tutoring, which provided extra help to more than 5,000 of the district’s 100,000 students in 2022-23, the second year of a three-year…
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Tutoring research points to intensive daily tutoring as one of the most effective ways to help academically struggling children catch up. There have been a hundred randomized control trials, but one of the most cited is of a tutoring program in Chicago high schools, where ninth and 10th graders learned an extra year or two of math from a daily dose of tutoring. That’s the kind of result that could offset pandemic learning losses, which…
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Well before the pandemic, researchers were zeroing in on tutoring as a way to help children who were significantly behind grade level. Tutoring research shows remedial classes had generally been a failure, and researchers often saw disappointing results from after-school and summer school programs because students didn’t show up or didn’t want to go to school during vacation. But evidence for tutoring has been building for more than 30 years, as tutoring organizations designed reading…
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Throughout 2022, the Biden administration urged schools to spend their $122 billion in federal recovery funds on tutoring to help students catch up from pandemic learning losses. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said students who had fallen behind should receive at least 90 minutes of tutoring a week. Last summer, the White House put even more muscle behind the rhetoric and launched a “National Partnership for Student Success” with the goal of providing students with high…
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