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Tutoring
Helping the Many by Tutoring the Few: The Social Multiplier of Early Literacy Instruction
Topics: Student LearningTutoring is almost always evaluated by randomizing students within schools, a design that differences out any spillover onto classmates. We instead randomize 81 Danish schools and 2,583 kindergartners, tutoring a few children in each and testing all. Decoding improved 0.38 standard deviations… more →
Parents’ Biased Beliefs and Competitive Investments in Education: A Field Experiment
Topics: Families and CommunitiesUsing a field experiment in China, we demonstrate that parental investment decisions are affected by their beliefs about their peers’ investment levels, and that they often hold biased beliefs about these levels. When provided information about the true distribution of tutoring hours invested… more →
Virtual Tutoring with Computer-Assisted Learning: An Experiment in Take-Up and Learning
Topics: Student LearningWe explore the efficacy of an online after-school tutoring program that complements teacher-provided computer-assisted learning practice. The aim is to scaffold students struggling with online Khan Academy practice at school with low-cost, one-on-one virtual supervision for about an hour a week… more →
Making AI Tutoring Productive: Evidence from a Mastery-Based Math Practice Experiment
Topics: Student LearningLarge language models (LLMs) can make tutoring more scalable, but only if students use them to reason through mistakes rather than avoid effort. We study this question in a randomized field experiment with more than 6,000 middle-school students in Hamilton County Schools using NUMI, a research-… more →
One Click Away: AI Tutoring with Khanmigo in a Two-Year School Experiment
Topics: Student LearningGenerative AI has been promoted as the technology that could transform education by providing every student a personal tutor. We provide some of the first large-scale experimental evidence, from a two-year cluster randomized trial in 18 Tennessee middle schools in which randomly assigned… more →
From Pilot to Policy: Experimental Evidence from Scaling Online Tutoring
María Calle, Lucas Gortazar, Maria Hernandez-de-Benito, Claudia Hupkau, Teresa Molina-Millán, Antonio Roldán-Monés.We study a randomized controlled trial of an online mathematics tutoring program scaled from a successful pilot and implemented entirely by regional education authorities in Spain, using interim public-school teachers rather than specially recruited tutors. Assignment to tutoring increased end-… more →
Sensemaking in the Program Stream: How Local Leaders Re-purposed the “ALL In Virginia” Policy
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceSchool and district leaders are challenged to comprehend and translate policy into practice, a process shaped by cognitive, social, and political dynamics. This study offers a conceptual analysis of Virginia's post-COVID-19 “ALL In” policy, which directed nearly half a billion dollars… more →
The Trade-off between Quality and Quantity: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Tutoring
Topics: Student LearningHigh-dosage tutoring has the potential to substantially raise adolescent academic achievement. However, at scale, schools may not have the financial ability to deliver small-group tutoring frequently. In this paper, I test the relative importance of group size (quality) versus tutoring frequency… more →
Online Tutoring, School Performance, and School-to-Work Transitions: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial
Silke Anger, Bernhard Christoph, Agata Galkiewicz, Shushanik Margaryan, Malte Sandner, Thomas Siedler.Tags: TutoringTutoring programs for low-performing students, delivered in-person or online, effectively enhance school performance, yet their medium- and longer-term impacts on labor market outcomes remain less understood. To address this gap, we conduct a randomized controlled trial with 839 secondary school… more →
Beyond the Classroom: Impact of a High-Dosage Tutoring Program on Student Literacy Achievement
Topics: Student LearningThis study examines the impact of a high-dosage tutoring program, characterized by low tutor-to-student-ratio, on the literacy achievement of students in grades two through five in a midsized suburban school district in the southeastern United States. Using a student-level randomized controlled… more →
Cheaper (and more effective) by the dozen: Evidence from 12 randomized A/B tests optimizing tutoring for scale
Topics: Student LearningOver the course of 12 rapid randomized experiments, we optimize an educational tutoring program. Tutoring is one of the most effective educational approaches yet has remained difficult to scale due to high costs. We adaptively test and improve a technology-enabled tutoring program to enhance… more →
Creating Coherence: Does Instructional Alignment Affect the Impact of Tutoring?
Topics: Student LearningThis study examines the impact of using instructionally aligned literacy tutoring with students in kindergarten through third grade under a Response to Intervention framework. We conducted a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impact on literacy assessment scores for 296 students in four… more →
Off to a Great Start: The Potential for Tutoring Paired with the Off2Class Foundational Literacy Curriculum to Boost English Proficiency Gains for Adolescent Newcomer English Learners
Topics: Student LearningAdolescent English learners with low literacy strive to learn a new language with minimal or no reading skills. Their efforts are often complicated by having special learning needs or limited experiences with formal education. Meanwhile, they need English literacy in middle and high school,… more →
The Effect of College Entrance Exam Policies on Test Preparation and Tutoring Services
Multiple studies suggest that policies mandating college entrance exams can have positive impacts on college outcomes, especially for students who would otherwise not sit for the exam. Less understood is how families react to this increased competition for college admissions. Our study estimates… more →
When interventions don’t move the needle: Insights from null results in education research
Topics: Student LearningAs school districts focus on improving learning, they can learn not only from when and where interventions work—but also from why they sometimes do not. Policymakers widely embraced high-impact tutoring as an evidence-supported strategy to address learning delays from the COVID-19 pandemic.… more →
Investing in Human Capital During Wartime: Experimental Evidence from Ukraine
Topics: Student LearningThis paper provides insights into human capital investments during wartime by presenting evidence from three experiments of an online tutoring program for Ukrainian students amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Conducted between early 2023 and mid-2024, the experiments reached nearly 10,000… more →
The Power of Personalized Attention: Comparing Pedagogical Approaches in Small Group and One-on-One Early Literacy Tutoring
Topics: Student LearningTutoring has played a significant role in pandemic-related learning recovery, supporting student learning and engagement. A recent randomized controlled trial estimated that one-on-one virtual early literacy tutoring was nearly twice as effective as two-on-one tutoring for improving student… more →
Understanding Disruptions: Causes of and Variation in Lost Instructional Time
Topics: Student LearningVirtual instruction has boomed after the COVID-19 pandemic, including the use of virtual environments within in-person schools. But, research has provided little evidence about student experiences on these virtual platforms, nor how to improve the use of these platforms. Through natural language… more →
The Impact of Tutor Gender Match on Girls’ STEM Interest, Engagement, and Performance
Topics: Student LearningTags: TutoringGender disparities in STEM persist despite girls performing as well as boys academically, suggesting girls may benefit from role models who shape their perceptions of STEM. We examine whether female math tutors influence girls’ STEM interest, attendance, and performance. We randomly assigned 422… more →
Experimental Evidence on the Impact of Tutoring Format and Tutors: Findings from an Early Literacy Tutoring Program
Topics: Student LearningThis study presents the first within-program, within-tutor experimental evidence comparing the impact of in-person versus remote tutoring. Based on results from an early literacy tutoring initiative delivered by university students over Summer 2023, we find no statistically significant… more →