社区黑料

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for 社区黑料 Newsletter

Updated Feb. 24

High-quality tutoring has emerged as an important post-pandemic for helping struggling students in public schools. finds that tutoring often results in substantial additional learning gains when delivered during the school day, in small groups with the same tutors and multiple times a week for at least 10 weeks. 

But this often comes with a substantial price tag 鈥� depending on the model and staffing approach, can range from $1,200 to $2,500 per student per year. During the pandemic, many districts relied on federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to launch or expand tutoring programs, but these have largely expired.

Fortunately, states and school districts have access to other funding streams, which can be combined through 鈥渂lending鈥� and 鈥渂raiding鈥� to cover the costs of tutoring when a single source is insufficient.

Federal Funding 

Though federal funding faced significant uncertainty during the Fiscal Year 2026 budget process, Congress passed a spending package that sustains many of these funding streams, at least for the coming year. 

School districts may use Elementary and Secondary Education Act funds 鈥� federal aid intended to close achievement gaps for low-income students 鈥� for schoolwide or targeted tutoring programs, depending on a school鈥檚 poverty level. ESEA funds, which support the recruitment, training and retention of effective educators, can be used to train staff as tutors and provide stipends to those who take on this additional responsibility. ESEA fund student support, academic enrichment and afterschool programs, which includes tutoring. 

Other federal funds may be used for tutoring programs that aid certain student groups. ESEA funds can be used to train and pay tutors of English learners and Native American and Alaska Native students, respectively. And the can cover the cost of tutoring, instructional materials and tutor professional development when these services are tied to a student鈥檚 Individualized Education Program.

Beyond direct funding, districts can leverage federally supported service and employment programs. AmeriCorps, a national service initiative funded primarily through federal appropriations, has long supplied tutors to low-income districts and schools through full-time programs like City Year. And the federal work-study program helps pay part-time salaries for college undergraduates and graduate students, including those who tutor in K-12 schools. 

Finally, the U.S. Department of Education has聽听颈迟蝉听, a regulatory framework for discretionary grant competitions. This emphasis aligns with the department鈥檚 Fiscal Year 2025 literacy grants, which include roughly $89 million recently awarded to seven state education agencies to scale tutoring programs.

State and Local Funding

are playing a pivotal role in sustaining and scaling tutoring programs launched with federal ESSER funds by using funding formulas, policy mandates and infrastructure supports to keep post-pandemic initiatives going. 

Many states have relied on short-term appropriations. Louisiana, for example, paired a K-5 tutoring for low-performing students with an initial appropriation in the 2024-25 school year and another $30 million in 2025-26, though future funding will depend on annual legislative approval. 

And while most state tutoring investments have been one-time commitments, stands out for embedding tutoring in its K-12 funding formula by providing an additional $500 per fourth-grader each year for literacy tutoring.  

Some states have enacted tutoring mandates without funding them. , for example, requires that students in grades 3 to 8 who failed the state assessment the previous year receive tutoring, but districts must use a combination of state, federal and local funds to pay for it. Twenty-four states offer , such as vendor lists or other procurement assistance.

A smaller number of states have statewide programs that recruit, train and place members of their tutors corps in schools. In , this operates through a nonprofit model backed by and philanthropy. The is embedded within the state education department and relies on a combination of expiring federal relief funds and funds from local foundations, nonprofits and city governments.

Districts, cities and counties sometimes offer competitive grants that can fund tutoring, and superintendents can reallocate existing dollars for tutoring through their districts’ annual budget process. In cities with strong mayoral involvement in education, tutoring dollars can be allocated directly through the city budget, as the leaders of ., and have done. 

Higher Education Partnerships

Colleges and universities represent a large, often underused source of potential low-cost tutors. In a 2023 , then-Secretary of Education Miguel A. Cardona encouraged cross-sector partnerships to scale tutoring and highlighted federal work-study as a key resource. The letter noted that when eligible college students tutored school-aged children, the government could cover up to 100% of their wages through federal work-study. That guidance remains in effect, and there have been no subsequent regulatory changes to the program.

Teacher-preparation programs are also well positioned to expand tutoring capacity. At for example, undergraduate education majors are required to serve as tutors in local elementary schools as part of their coursework. Although the tutors are unpaid, their work counts toward their field-placement hours for graduation, giving them more than required by the state. There is no cost for participating public schools. The model enables districts to sustain tutoring at little to no cost, while future teachers gain valuable classroom experience. 

Leveraging Philanthropic and Nonprofit Support 

School districts can also partner with philanthropic and nonprofit organizations. The , launched as a public-private partnership during the Biden administration and now operating independently, offers free and connects districts with vetted providers of staffing, training and financial assistance for tutors, helping to reduce hiring, training and program startup costs.

The upshot is that there are more sources of support for intensive tutoring in public schools than one might think. Tapping them may require education policymakers and practitioners to move money from other programs. But with a large body of research showing increased and meaningful learning gains from high-quality tutoring done during the school day, that shouldn鈥檛 be a difficult decision to make.

Did you use this article in your work?

We鈥檇 love to hear how 社区黑料鈥檚 reporting is helping educators, researchers, and policymakers.