School Readiness
Create strong foundations for early learning.
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Tutoring
Rigorous evidence finds that high-impact tutoring, in which students receive substantial, targeted, curriculum-aligned instruction each week, can help students—especially those from low-income families—recover from pandemic-related learning loss and boost achievement. However, scaling these programs is challenging due to the high cost per student, the need for a well-trained tutoring workforce, and the importance of effectively allocating support to those who need it most. Our research focuses on identifying evidence-based, high-impact tutoring solutions that can yield substantial gains in student achievement cost-effectively and at scale.
Completed
What’s in a Contract? How Outcomes-Based Contracting Reshapes School District–Vendor Relationships
In this landscape study, researchers examined how school districts are using outcomes-based contracting (OBC), or contracts with vendors that tie at least part of payment to student outcomes, through analysis of 123 contracts related to the purchase of products and services for instructional activities.
Completed
The Impact of Tutoring and EdTech in Greenville County Schools, South Carolina
This brief summarizes the preliminary findings of the Personalized Learning Initiative (PLI) partnership with Greenville County Schools in the 2023-24 school year to study two intervention models, both designed to provide personalized mathematics support.
Completed
The Impact of Tutor Gender Match on Girls’ STEM Interest, Engagement, and Performance
In a sample of 422 students and 23 tutors across five high schools in SY 2021-22, this randomized control trial examined the impact of assigning students to same-gender math tutors on students’ STEM interest, attendance, and math performance.
Completed
Personalized Learning Initiative Interim Report 2023-24
This interim report presents findings from data collected to date through the Personalized Learning Initiative (PLI), a large-scale RCT of over 27,000 students to examine differences between evidence-based high-dosage tutoring (HDT) models, “sustainable” high-dosage tutoring models (SHDT) that are newer and lower-cost, and business as usual.
Completed
The Impact of Virtual High-Dosage Tutoring in New Mexico
This is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) measuring the impact of high-dosage math tutoring on student learning for 1,462 middle school students across New Mexico.
Completed
Teaching Teachers to Use Computer Assisted Learning Effectively: Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Evidence
This paper includes two studies: 1) a descriptive pilot study conducted in Nashville examining the feasibility of Khoaching with Khan, a teacher-coaching approach to supplement the implementation of Khan Academy (a computer-assisted learning platform); and 2) an RCT in Arlington testing the impact of Khoaching with Khan—delivered to math teachers over an academic year—on elementary and middle school students’ math achievement.
Completed
Tutor CoPilot: A Human-AI Approach for Scaling Real-Time Expertise
This study uses an RCT to estimate the impacts of Tutor CoPilot—a novel human-AI approach that leverages a model of expert thinking to provide guidance to tutors as they tutor—on tutoring quality and students’ mastery of content knowledge.
Completed
Effects of High-Impact Tutoring on Student Attendance: Evidence from the OSSE HIT Initiative in the District of Columbia
This study examined the roll-out of the District of Columbia’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) high-impact tutoring (HIT) initiative.
Completed
New Jersey Tutoring Corps School Year 2022-23 Efficacy Report
This is a pre-post descriptive study examining growth in literacy and math skills for the 500 students who received in-school tutoring through the New Jersey Tutoring Corps during the 2022-23 year.
Completed
The Effects of Virtual Tutoring on Young Readers
This is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of OnYourMark Education, which provides high-impact virtual tutoring for 20 minutes a day, four days a week, to students in kindergarten through second grade.
Completed
Not Too Late: Improving Academic Outcomes Among Adolescents
Researchers from the University of Chicago conducted two separate randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of Saga Education, which offers high-dosage tutoring to support student learning. The studies aimed to evaluate the impact of Saga’s two-on-one tutoring model—delivered by trained paraprofessionals—on high school students’ math performance.
Completed
Report on Impact of Online Tutoring on Math Achievement
This reports on a series of small randomized controlled encouragement design studies, quasi-experiments, and pre-post studies that assessed the impact of weekly email reminders and five dollar financial incentives on (i) student take-up of UPchieve, a free online tutoring platform for economically-disadvantaged students, and (ii) student math achievement.
Completed
Use of MAP Accelerator Associated with Better-Than-Projected Gains in MAP Growth Scores
This is a correlational study that examines the relation between math achievement and student engagement with the MAP Accelerator, an intervention developed by Khan Academy and NWEA to support students’ personalized learning in math based on the prior math achievement.
In Progress
Building the Evidence Base for High-Impact Tutoring through Accelerate’s Research Ecosystem
This initiative supports multiple rigorous studies that aim to evaluate high-impact tutoring models and innovations, with a focus on effectiveness, cost, and scalability across diverse contexts.
In Progress
Evaluating the Impact of Tutoring At-Scale through the Personalized Learning Initiative
This study evaluates the impact of diverse tutoring models implemented at-scale and examines how program features, implementation, and cost influence effectiveness for different students.
In Progress
Evaluating the Impact of the New Jersey Tutoring Corps on Student Achievement and Attendance
This study evaluates the impact of the New Jersey Tutoring Corps’ tutoring supports on students’ math and English language arts (ELA) achievement and attendance.
In Progress
Evaluating the Impact of Saga’s Virtual Tutoring Model on High School Math Achievement
This study evaluates the impact of Saga Education’s all-virtual tutoring model on ninth grade math achievement, examines how implementation conditions influence impact, and estimates the cost per student of virtual tutoring.
In Progress
Evaluating the Impact of OnYourMark’s 2:1 Virtual Tutoring Model on Early Literacy Outcomes
This study evaluates the impact of a virtual tutoring model, OnYourMark, on early literacy outcomes for students in kindergarten through second grade.
Open Research Questions
Completed study findings aligned with these questions in our repository include:
- Personalized Learning Initiative Interim Report Findings from 2023-2024
- Not Too Late: Improving Academic Outcomes Among Adolescents
- The Effects of Virtual Tutoring on Young Readers
In-progress studies that address these questions are:
- Evaluating the Impact of OnYourMark’s 2:1 Virtual Tutoring Model on Early Literacy Outcomes
- Evaluating the Impact of Saga’s Virtual Tutoring Model on High School Math Achievement
- Evaluating the Impact of Tutoring At-Scale through the Personalized Learning Initiative
- Evaluating the Impact of the New Jersey Tutoring Corps on Student Achievement and Attendance
- Building the Evidence Base for High-Impact Tutoring through Accelerate’s Research Ecosystem
- Evaluating the Impact of Springboard Collaborative on Early Literacy and Student Outcomes
Completed study findings aligned with this question in our repository include:
- The Impact of Tutor Gender Match on Girls’ STEM Interest, Engagement, and Performance
- Use of MAP Accelerator Associated with Better Than-Projected Gains in MAP Growth Scores
In-progress studies that address this question are:
Completed study findings aligned with these questions in our repository include:
- The Impact of Tutoring and EdTech in Greenville County Schools, South Carolina
- Personalized Learning Initiative Interim Report Findings from 2023-2024
- The Impact of Virtual High-Dosage Tutoring in New Mexico
In-progress studies that address these questions are:
- Evaluating the Impact of OnYourMark’s 2:1 Virtual Tutoring Model on Early Literacy Outcomes
- Evaluating the Impact of Saga’s Virtual Tutoring Model on High School Math Achievement
- Evaluating the Impact of Tutoring At-Scale through the Personalized Learning Initiative
- Building the Evidence Base for High-Impact Tutoring through Accelerate’s Research Ecosystem
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