Pandemic-era disruptions to education resulted in an unprecedented influx of federal funds to K–12 schools, some of which was used to address lost student learning. Summer school, one-to-one technology, academic enrichment, and virtual resources were among the myriad remedies deployed, but none was thought to hold more promise than tutoring. Studies indicate far less positive impact than hoped for from tutoring, particularly for those students who fell furthest behind. What happened? A new report from the journal Educational Researcher digs into one charter network’s implementation efforts and finds evidence that could explain the problem.
A trio of California-based researchers partnered with Aspire Public Schools, a large network of charter schools in the state with locations in the Bay Area, the Central Valley, and Los Angeles. At the start of the spring semester of 2021, all 7,000 Aspire middle and high school students received personal electronic devices and free access to an unnamed on-demand virtual tutoring platform covering content in core academic subjects. The service was available 24/7, but the research team doesn’t delve into details on when students used it other than to say they are aware of instances where it was incorporated into classroom time. In other words, this is not a study of embedded versus non-embedded tutoring.
The researchers examined student usage of the platform in that initial semester and tested the efficacy of targeted messaging to incentivize that use. To test the latter, they randomly assigned student households to a control group or to one of three treatment arms involving communications to students only, to parents only, or to both students and parents together. The researchers designed and disseminated the communication pieces using several different styles and tones; employing print (flyers and mailers), email, and text message; and utilizing various approaches such as reminders, appeals to social norms, accountability, and valuing of the academic subject. These were separate from whatever outreach individual schools or teachers were providing, which were received by all students and were not tracked as part of the experiment.
In the control group, only 19 percent of students ever accessed the platform during the semester and engaged in a tutoring session. Those control group students who did access it attended, on average, 4.3 tutoring sessions and exchanged 146.05 messages with a tutor. But the average control group student—when including those who never accessed the platform—participated in a mere 0.80 sessions and exchanged twenty-seven messages with a tutor via the platform. Ninth grade students and students with higher prior course performance were most likely to participate, and several individual schools clocked substantially higher take-up rates.
Did targeted messaging boost participation? Results varied depending on who received the communications, whether only the student, only the parent, or both parent and student. Students who only received messaging directly used the tutoring platform at about the same rate as their control group peers. Students whose parents received messaging were 5.7 percentage points more likely to access the tutoring platform than the control group. However, neither the number of sessions attended nor number of messages exchanged with tutors differed significantly from their control group peers. In other words, targeting parents alone seemed to induce a one-time sign-on but not students’ continued usage of the platform. The most effective communication approach engaged both student and parent. Such students were 8.6 percentage points more likely to use the platform. Additionally, they attended 1.4 sessions, on average, and exchanged 64.6 messages with tutors, both of which represent statistically significant increases over control group peers—even if those numbers are still very low.
The researchers make some effort to connect participation in tutoring with learning gains, but their outcomes are limited to course grades, and they therefore considered the small positive impact as merely “suggestive evidence.” There are no data provided on how much the charter network spent to implement this tutoring service, but whatever it was, the bang for that buck was clearly just a whimper. Despite the promise of tutoring, Aspire students reaped nearly no benefit from it—like many other students nationwide.
Ultimately, the researchers focus on the opt-in nature of the tutoring program as the primary reason for low overall usage and the fact that lower-performing students—those who need academic supports the most—were least likely to access it. “Helping the students who need it most will require a coordinated effort between educators and families to provide students with embedded, personalized learning opportunities,” they offer. Translation: Recovering lost learning can’t be optional, and all adults must be on board with requiring additional work to get it done. To which we could add, at five years and counting, time is quickly running out.
SOURCE: Carly D. Robinson, Biraj Bisht, and Susanna Loeb, “The Inequity of Opt-in Educational Resources and an Intervention to increase Equitable Access,” Educational Researcher (April 2025).
