High-Dosage Tutoring Reverses COVID Learning Loss

The shift to remote learning during the COVID pandemic left millions of students trailing behind in math and reading. Years later, parents and educators are still searching for the best ways to close those gaps. Fortunately, school districts are finding success with a highly structured intervention. High-dosage tutoring is currently proving to be the most effective strategy to reverse COVID learning loss and get students back on track.

What Is High-Dosage Tutoring?

Not all extra help is created equal. Standard after-school homework clubs or drop-in tutoring centers rarely move the needle on standardized test scores. High-dosage tutoring is a specific, research-backed model designed to maximize student growth in a short amount of time.

According to the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University, a program must meet strict criteria to qualify as high-dosage.

• Frequency: Students must meet with their tutor at least three times a week.
• Session Length: Sessions generally last between 30 and 50 minutes.
• Group Size: Tutors work with a maximum of three students at a time. A one-to-one or one-to-two ratio is ideal.
• Consistency: Students work with the exact same tutor for the entire semester or school year.
• Integration: Tutoring happens during the regular school day instead of after school. This guarantees high attendance rates.
• Curriculum: The tutoring material aligns perfectly with the core classroom curriculum.

By keeping the groups incredibly small and the meetings frequent, tutors build strong relationships with the students. This connection builds confidence and helps reduce the anxiety many kids feel around difficult subjects like math.

The Data Behind the Success

The academic gains tied to high-dosage tutoring are massive. Research from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University shows that these programs can add three to fifteen months of learning progress in a single school year.

Saga Education is a leading nonprofit that provides high-dosage math tutoring. They partnered with Chicago Public Schools to test this model on a large scale. The results were highly impressive. Students enrolled in the Saga program learned an extra one to two years of math in a single academic year compared to their peers who did not receive the tutoring. Furthermore, the students’ math grades improved, and their failure rates in other subjects dropped significantly.

While high-dosage tutoring works well for reading, the data shows it is especially powerful for math. Math is highly sequential. If a student misses a core concept like fractions during remote learning, they will struggle heavily when the class moves on to algebra. A dedicated tutor can identify that exact missing building block and teach it directly.

Real-World Programs in Action

States and school districts across the country are rolling out comprehensive programs to combat learning loss.

Tennessee launched TN ALL Corps, a state-wide initiative that invested millions of dollars to bring high-dosage tutoring to local districts. The state recognized that finding certified teachers to do this extra work was too difficult due to staffing shortages. Instead, they trained college students and community members to run the sessions using highly structured lesson plans.

In Texas, lawmakers passed House Bill 4545. This law requires schools to provide 30 hours of targeted instruction for any student who fails state standardized assessments. To meet this legal requirement, many Texas districts have partnered with online high-dosage tutoring companies like BookNook and Zearn. These platforms allow students to receive live, face-to-face instruction through their laptops during designated school periods.

Funding the Recovery

High-dosage tutoring is expensive. Hiring, training, and paying tutors costs between $1,000 and $2,500 per student each year.

To afford this, public schools are heavily relying on ESSER (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) funds. The federal government provided nearly $190 billion in pandemic relief for schools over the last few years. Districts have poured a large portion of this money into their new tutoring programs.

However, a major financial cliff is approaching fast. Districts must commit their final round of ESSER III funds by September 2024. As this federal money dries up, school boards are scrambling to find room in their standard budgets to keep these successful tutoring programs alive. Many districts will have to cut back on the number of students they can serve, reserving the one-on-one help strictly for those furthest behind grade level.

How Parents Can Advocate for Their Children

If your child is still struggling to catch up from the pandemic, you can take action. Contact your school principal and ask specific questions about their intervention strategies.

Ask if the school offers high-dosage tutoring during the school day. Find out what the student-to-tutor ratio is. If the school only offers drop-in after-school help, share the research from Stanford University regarding the benefits of structured, in-school tutoring. You can also request that your child’s classroom teacher and their tutor communicate regularly to ensure they are focusing on the exact skills your child needs to pass their current grade level.

Frequently Asked Questions

What makes a tutoring program “high-dosage”? High-dosage tutoring requires students to meet with a dedicated tutor at least three times a week for 30 to 50 minutes. The groups must be very small, usually capped at three students per tutor, to ensure highly personalized instruction.

Is high-dosage tutoring better for math or reading? While it is highly effective for both subjects, research shows the largest academic gains typically happen in math. Math requires a strong foundation of sequential skills, making it easy for a tutor to identify and fix specific knowledge gaps.

How are public schools paying for high-dosage tutoring? Most school districts are using federal ESSER funds to pay for these programs. This federal pandemic relief money allows schools to hire extra staff and partner with private tutoring companies.

Who actually does the tutoring? Because of severe teacher shortages, most tutors are not certified classroom teachers. Schools are successfully using trained paraprofessionals, AmeriCorps members, college students, and trained community members to run the tutoring sessions.