Education Week - January 18, 2023 - 5

Schools Are Spending Big Bucks on Online Tutoring.
Here's What They've Learned
Students need more than " homework
help " to recover from pandemic learning
loss. Is online tutoring up to the task?
By Libby Stanford
Tutoring works.
That's been the message for schools
and educators since before the
COVID-19 pandemic, with lots of research
to back it up. But pervasive staffing
problems have gotten in the way.
That is, until online tutoring came
along. For decades, companies like
Varsity Tutors and FEV Tutor have
been offering online and virtual tutoring
services to school districts. Startups
like Paper, which began offering
on-demand tutoring in the 2018-19
school year, seized the pandemic moment
and ramped up services.
For many districts, the online tutoring
services have been a logical investment,
a way to reap its benefits while
avoiding the logistical complications
of finding in-person help, especially as
federal ESSER funds rolled in.
But it hasn't been that simple.
Researchers say tutoring works best
if it's high-dosage (offered three or
more days of the week), consistent,
and personalized to the student. The
on-demand chat box version of tutoring
that many have come to associate
with the online world doesn't often
meet those qualifications. It requires
students to show up on their own accord
and be self-aware of the areas in
which they may need help. Often, students
don't get the same tutor at every
session.
Such pitfalls have led districts in
Columbus, Ohio, and Santa Ana,
Calif., to cancel contracts with Paper,
which offers exclusively on-demand
tutoring, after not enough students
utilized the service, according to
Chalkbeat.
" High-impact tutoring is a relationship-based
tutoring, " said Susanna
Loeb, the director of the Annenberg
Institute at Brown University, which
produces research on effective education
practices. " It relies on an adult
to understand a student, understand
their needs, be there to celebrate successes
with them, be there to support
them. "
Most districts initially went for ondemand
tutoring and since haven't
seen the benefits, said Anthony Salcito,
the chief institution business officer
at Varsity Tutors.
" The thing that's happened in this
country is [on-demand tutoring has]
been the bulk of what schools have
opted for initially, " Salcito said. " [We
all have] sort of put what I would consider
the supplemental support as the
foundation as opposed to actually
putting tutoring front and center. "
Now, some companies and district
leaders have found themselves altering
their virtual tutoring strategy so
that it is most effective for students.
Since the start of the pandemic
through March 15, 2017, school districts
across the country had spent
$1.7 billion, or $199 per student, of
their COVID-19 federal relief funding
on tutoring, both online and in person,
according to data from FutureEd, a
Georgetown University research center
that has analyzed COVID-19 relief
spending.
There's a federal stamp of approval,
too: The Biden administration has
made it clear that tutoring should be
one of the top priorities for the pandemic
funds. It launched its National
Partnership for Student Success, an
initiative to bring 250,000 tutors and
academic mentors to schools through
partnerships with education nonprofits
and AmeriCorps.
The most popular strategy in town
The support behind tutoring makes
sense-it's a strategy with significant
evidence backing it. On average, tutoring
can increase student achievement
by around three to 15 months of learning
across grade levels, according to a
research review from the Annenberg Institute.
It's also one of the most effective
strategies to increase achievement for
lower-income students, the report says.
" When you look at the research,
what's interesting is that tutoring
stands out above everything else, "
Loeb said. " We know that things are
important for schools: good teachers,
good curriculum, all sorts of things
like that. But if you're thinking about
a student and how to make sure that
student really does better over time,
tutoring is the only thing that we found
with evidence-and it has substantial
evidence. "
Online tutoring itself is also not
new. Not long after use of the internet
broadened, tutoring companies have
popped up offering students and educators
online services.
But the pandemic pushed online
tutoring into a new arena. More districts
invested in devices and internet
services so students could access
schooling at home. That shift toward
technology, coupled with increased
funding from the federal government,
made online tutoring a more alluring
investment for district leaders.
" The pandemic didn't really change
the demand for academic support, "
Paper CEO Philip Cutler said. " I think
what really changed was the use of
technology more broadly in schools. "
Not a simple fix
In December 2020, the Jefferson
County school district in Louisville,
Ky., entered into a contract with FEV
Tutor to offer about five hours of tutoring
per week to around 7,000 3rd
through 12th graders.
" We, like every other district in the
nation, are experiencing staffing shortages, "
said Dena Dossett, the district's
chief of research. " What this online
tutoring allows us to do is provide that
additional support that would be very
challenging to do in person. "
The Jefferson County district
made a point to ensure that its tutoring
would follow the Annenberg
research, Dossett said. That's why
the district went with FEV Tutor for
the bulk of its program. The tutoring
service helps schools in the district to
identify students struggling with core
subjects based on their MAP scores,
which come from tests administered
at several points throughout the year.
Those students then participate in live
video tutoring with the same tutor five
hours a week during class time.
" We anticipated seeing growth because
[FEV Tutor is] using the MAP
scores to pinpoint what instructional
needs the students have, " Dossett
said. " It's individualized one-on-one.
So they're able to dig a little bit deeper
and have more time to provide differentiated
support. "
The company has offered personalized
tutoring to districts since its inception
in 2009, said Ryan Patenaude,
the executive vice president and cofounder
of FEV Tutor. Its goal is to improve
learning by strategically working
with the district, Patenaude said. The
company uses the Annenberg research
to guide its tutoring model.
" Everyone thinks tutoring has to be
after school, it has to be homework help,
it has to be what the status quo tutoring
is, " Patenaude said. " There's so much
more that can be done with tutoring. "
So far, it has worked for Jefferson
County. Students who used FEV
Tutor saw their math scores increase
4.5 points and their reading scores increase
4.2 points in a winter-to-spring
2021-22 analysis of NWEA MAP
scores. Students who didn't use FEV
Tutor grew, too, but not as much.
Other tutoring companies are starting
to shift their tutoring models to
more closely follow the research. Varsity
Tutors has expanded its high-dosage
tutoring to include on-demand
and teacher-assigned tutoring.
The high-dosage tutoring allows districts
and schools to provide targeted
tutoring to a population of students who
might be struggling more in one subject
area than another, while the teacherassigned
tutoring allows schools to provide
intensive support as needs arise,
said Salcito, the Varsity executive. Both
options give students access to the same
tutor every time they log on.
" It's giving tremendous power to
teachers to help individualize instruction,
not only reactively but proactively, "
Salcito said. " We think this is
going to be not only great for identifying
kids at risk of failing but also empowering
teachers to help relieve the
stress and burden that they have to do
this work on their own. "
Where on-demand tutoring fits in
So why does on-demand online tutoring
seem to fall so short? For one
thing, it requires students themselves
to take initiative. Only students who
log in three days a week for at least 30
minutes of live tutoring help are going
to have significant academic gains,
and those students are often already
high achievers, Loeb said.
" When you start to get computers
involved with online tutoring, it's easy
to move to that opt-in, and you're really
going to miss a lot of kids, " she
said. " In general, it's really hard for
students to understand what they
need support with. So that's why a
program that uses data to understand
students' needs, has material there to
support their development, is really
much more beneficial. "
That doesn't mean on-demand
tutoring has no place in schools. Jefferson
County uses Paper as an ondemand
service for middle and high
school students in addition to its
tutoring with FEV Tutor. Cutler, the
CEO of Paper, sees such services as
one piece of the overall academicrecovery
puzzle, when used as a tool
alongside other academic-recovery
strategies-such as after-school programs,
mental health supports for
students, and extended learning time.
" I don't think that it's a one-sizefits-all
solution, " Cutler said. " Districts
need to know their community;
they need to know what works best. "
The Omaha school district in Nebraska
recently applied this approach
when developing a three-pronged
tutoring program for its students. In
addition to on-demand online tutoring
offered by Paper, the program
includes in-person, high-dosage tutoring
by teachers, who will be paid
extra for working with students after
school. Other students in the district's
separate after-school programs will
also receive in-person tutoring.
Susanne Cramer, Omaha's executive
director of school improvement,
noted that the district has also placed
academic-recovery liaisons at each
school to oversee both the district's tutoring
and summer learning programs.
" That consistent relationship, alignment
to [core classroom] instruction,
and that dosing component of 50 hours
or 36 weeks, that's the golden triangle of
what we're trying to achieve, " she said.
Cramer said the district is following
the same Annenberg research that
shows consistent relationships and
high doses of tutoring are most effective.
The program is new, so the district
doesn't yet have data to track students'
progress, but it will be assessing students
throughout the program to see
how well it's working.
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