社区黑料

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

Three times a week, the young students struggling the most with reading at each of Milwaukee College Prep鈥檚 four campuses go to a dedicated classroom, don their headphones, and log into a virtual tutoring session.

For the next 30 minutes, each student gets one-on-one attention from a certified teacher who might ask them about their dog or their baby sister before diving into the lesson.

Virtual tutoring 鈥� in this case through a provider called OpenLiteracy 鈥� is the only way Milwaukee College Prep could provide so much tutoring for so many children and from such experienced educators, said Erica Badger, director of curriculum and instruction for the 2,000-student charter network.

鈥淲e have a hundred kids on at once,鈥� she said. 鈥淏eing able to have that many adults come into the school building? I can鈥檛 even imagine.鈥�

For these reasons and others, virtual tutoring has remained part of the toolbox of American schools long after students returned to in-person classes. It costs less than in-person tutoring, scheduling is more flexible, and providers aren鈥檛 limited to hiring in the surrounding community.

But it doesn鈥檛 always work smoothly.

Two studies from Stanford University鈥檚 National Student Support Accelerator released Wednesday used natural language processing technologies to review transcripts from tens of thousands of hours of virtual tutoring sessions. Their goal: to better understand exactly what happens between tutors and students in these sessions.

as revealed through tutor comments, such as 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 see me? I鈥檓 not sure why you can鈥檛 see me鈥� or 鈥淪orry. Did you say something? It was hard to hear.鈥�

Researchers found that 19% of available time was lost to disruptions, whether from technological issues, distracted students, or background noise. Time lost to disruptions was even greater when tutors were working with more than one student, especially if one of the students entered the session late.

The with students in one-on-one sessions and in sessions with two students.

Students were randomly assigned to either an individual tutor or to work with the tutor and another student. Tutors spent more time talking overall when they were working with two students, but only about 21% of tutor speech was individualized content instruction, compared with 65% one-on-one sessions. The tutors in the one-on-one sessions also used more phrases associated with motivation and relationship-building.

Both studies involved young students working on early literacy skills.

High-intensity or high-dosage tutoring, generally defined as occurring at least three times a week and for 10 weeks or longer, emerged as one of the most high-profile and effective interventions to address pandemic-related learning loss. .

The new studies shed light on why virtual tutoring in particular has a mixed track record, according to studies. They also suggest ways schools and tutoring providers can make these sessions more effective. That鈥檚 especially important now that federal pandemic relief has expired, and schools have less money to spend.

鈥淭here are specific features that effective tutoring programs tend to have, but what is actually driving effectiveness is kind of a black box,鈥� said Carly Robinson, a co-author on both papers and director of research at Stanford鈥檚 SCALE Initiative, which runs the National Student Support Accelerator.

The emergence of virtual tutoring provides new opportunities to provide answers, because new technology allows audio and video from these sessions to be analyzed at scale, Robinson said. Previous research using similar techniques found, for example, that tutors tend to , unless that student was a girl paired with a higher-performing boy. In those cases, the boy still got more attention.

Robinson said the research findings shouldn鈥檛 deter schools from using virtual tutoring or even from using small group sessions. That 81% of tutoring time was productive even when working with very young children is a 鈥減ositive finding,鈥� Robinson said.

Students experienced more disruptions when they worked in the corner of a classroom than in dedicated tutoring spaces. Small schools experienced more disruptions than large schools did as they added tutoring sessions. And the youngest children, kindergartners, experienced significantly more disruptions than second graders.

Researchers suggest that schools find a quiet dedicated space for children to work if possible; have an adult on hand to handle tech issues; and be realistic about each school鈥檚 capacity to host a lot of video calls at once.

The study on one-to-one versus two-to-one tutoring suggests that tutors may need different techniques, including strategies from in-person small group instruction, to ensure both students get the most possible from each session.

OnYourMark Education, the tutoring provider that was involved in that study, has already overhauled its 2:1 tutoring, CEO and founder Mindy Sjoblom said. Some of these changes were subtle, just as having tutors ask a question and then call on a child, so that both students have to pay attention to the question and think about the answer.

The study took place in OnYourMark鈥檚 second year of operation. Now in its fourth year, OnYourMark still offers one-to-one tutoring in , but when districts are paying out of pocket, they鈥檙e mostly opting for two-to-one sessions, she said. The company has lost some clients who decided they could no longer afford tutoring.

OnYourMark is piloting a program that has students work independently on an adaptive tech platform three days a week and meet with a tutor twice a week. If it鈥檚 successful, it would cost about 60% as much as two-to-one tutoring.

鈥淚f schools can鈥檛 afford to implement it, we鈥檙e spinning our wheels,鈥� Sjoblom said.

Thinking beyond a tutoring 鈥榞old standard鈥�

A lot of research on tutoring points to a 鈥済old standard,鈥� said Liz Cohen, vice president of policy at 50CAN, an advocacy group, and the author of 鈥淭he Future of Tutoring: Lessons from 10,000 School District Tutoring Initiatives.鈥� But schools might also be interested in what a silver standard or a bronze standard looks like.

The two new studies help identify trade-offs in a granular way that can shape training and program design, she said.

鈥淚t鈥檚 really important research because a big part of making tutoring more effective is figuring out how to scale it and make it more affordable,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hat means figuring out how to make the most out of the tutor鈥檚 time.鈥�

But Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center for Reinventing Public Education, said perfecting tutoring programs won鈥檛 have much impact if schools don鈥檛 also pay attention to their core instruction.

鈥淲hat does it mean to do high-impact tutoring in a school system where the classroom instruction has not been optimized?鈥� she said. 鈥淭his is a huge liability. We optimize too much on these design-based studies without thinking about the system as a whole.鈥�

Milwaukee College Prep originally targeted a small group of fourth graders for extra reading help, but Badger said the network school realized that was too late and not enough. A donor approached the school about wanting to fund something that would really move the needle on student outcomes. A gift of $500,000 a year over three years allows the network to provide one-on-one tutoring for 30 minutes a day, three times a week to 200 first and second grade students.

Sarah Scott Frank, CEO of OpenLiteracy, the tutoring provider at Milwaukee College Prep, said she believes strongly in one-to-one tutoring. When students don鈥檛 work at the same pace, it can be 鈥渃rushing鈥� for the slower student, Frank said.

鈥淥ne kid would be zooming along, and the kids are very perceptive, and they see that, and they think 鈥榮ee, I can鈥檛 do that,鈥� and it reinforces that negative identity,鈥� she said.

One-to-one tutoring costs more up front, she said. But she believes it鈥檚 more cost effective because it works.

The charter network already had a classroom aide providing small-group instruction in addition to the lead teacher in every classroom. The charter network has also upgraded its literacy curriculum to add more phonics. Tutors and classroom teachers use the same curriculum and can share data easily.

Teachers practice the transition to the tutoring room and do trial runs with the platform so that students can log in smoothly two minutes before the session is supposed to start. An adult is on hand to troubleshoot tech problems. Attendance is measured in minutes.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not a quiet environment,鈥� Badger acknowledges. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 this hum and excitement of learning.鈥�

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

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.