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Susanna Loeb is named to the 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings
Susanna Loeb is named to the 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings, recognizing the 200 university-based scholars who had the biggest influence on educational practice and policy last year.
For the full list and to learn more about the rankings, visit The 2025 RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings.
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Tutoring may not significantly improve attendance
In early 2024, initial reports indicated that tutoring might not only help kids catch up academically after the pandemic but could also combat chronic absenteeism. More recent research, however, suggests that prediction may have been overly optimistic.
Stanford University researchers have been studying Washington, D.C.’s $33 million investment in tutoring, which provided extra help to more than 5,000 of the district’s 100,000 students in 2022-23, the second year of a three-year tutoring initiative. When researchers looked at these students’ test scores, they found minimal to modest improvements in reading or math.
“We weren’t seeing a ton of big impacts on achievement,” said Monica Lee, one of the Stanford researchers. “But what we were seeing at that point in time were promising findings that the tutoring might be doing something for attendance.”
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How effective is tutoring in the United States? – 4 essential reads
The value of in-class tutoring
Susanna Loeb, executive director of the National Student Support Accelerator, explained that the growth in spending on private tutoring is largely driven by wealthy families. This has contributed to wider educational gaps between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Loeb wrote that high-impact in-class tutoring is the most accessible and effective option. She added that it works best when it’s embedded in schools during the day, where a consistent tutoring session takes place for at least 30 minutes at a time and at a minimum of three days a week.
“The most effective way for parents to get free tutoring for their children is through their school,” Loeb wrote. “Students who attend tutoring as part of their regular school education either during or immediately before or after school are shown to have higher attendance rates, which leads to better outcomes, such as stronger math and reading achievement.”
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Pandemic, Politics, Pre-K & More: 12 Charts That Defined Education in 2024
| The 74
Tutoring programs exploded in the last five years as states and school districts searched for ways to counter plummeting achievement during COVID. But the cost of providing supplemental instruction to tens of millions of students can be eye-watering, even as the results seem to taper off as programs serve more students.
That’s where artificial intelligence could prove a decisive advantage. A report circulated in October by the National Student Support Accelerator found that an AI-powered tutoring assistant significantly improved the performance of hundreds of tutors by prompting them with new ways to explain concepts to students. With the help of the tool, dubbed Tutor CoPilot, students assigned to the weakest tutors began posting academic results nearly equal to those assigned to the strongest. And the cost to run the program was just $20 per pupil.
The paper suggests that tutoring initiatives may successfully adapt to the challenges of cost and scale. Another hopeful piece of evidence appeared this spring, when Stanford University researchers found that a “small burst” program in Florida produced meaningful literacy gains for young learners through micro-interactions lasting just 5–7 minutes at a time. If the success of such models can be replicated, there’s a chance that the benefits of tutoring could be enjoyed by millions more students.
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AI-enhanced tutoring: Bridging the achievement gap in American education
Key points:
- AI-enhanced can help create a more accessible, equitable, and effective education system
- Equitable access to AI in classrooms is a problem
- How AI can unleash student curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking
- For more news on AI in education, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub
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Although the initial results of AI-powered tutoring are extremely promising, its widespread implementation faces technical, ethical, and practical obstacles. For example, the Tutor CoPilot project has identified several technical challenges, including the need for robust content knowledge, the ability to engage in multi-turn conversations, and the capacity to provide explanations tailored to individual students’ needs. These needs must be addressed before these tools are widely adopted, and they are likely best addressed by a collaborative effort between researchers, educators, and developers to refine and improve these systems to maximize impact.
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Tutors Don’t Get Much Training. A New Effort Could Help
Sustained tutoring designed to help kids catch up is intensive, structured, and highly relational, typically consisting of students working in 30-minute sessions three or more times a week with a trained educator.
Now, a new initiative is training tutors for the rigor and intensity needed to make it effective.
This kind of tutoring, considered the most intensive model, spread rapidly during pandemic-recovery efforts. Half of all high-poverty schools and 46 percent of public schools offer high-impact or high dosage tutoring as of May, up from 39 percent of all public schools and 47 percent of high-poverty schools in October 2023, according to the federal Schools Pulse Panel survey data, an ongoing collection from the U.S. Department of Education’s statistics wing.
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“It’s much more than just the dosage that makes the difference in this type of tutoring,” said Kathy Bendheim, the director of strategic advising for the National Student Support Accelerator, which studies tutoring models. “You do it with a consistent tutor, and it’s not homework help—it’s intentional instruction based on data about where that student is on their academic journey and what their specific instructional needs are.”
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Stanford conference explores education technology in the age of AI
“We want students to thrive throughout their whole life, and we want them to have the educational experiences that lead to that thriving,” said Professor Susanna Loeb in the opening panel of the 2024 Accelerate Edtech Impact summit at Stanford. “We want that for all students. We don’t just want that for students from well resourced families, and we don’t just want that for students who are motivated and engaged in school right now … we really have to think about the broad range of students.”
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Staying Bold: Redefining the Role of Education Research in a Rapidly Evolving World
| Stanford Accelerator for Learning
How can education research push boundaries, remain relevant, and lead transformative change in an era of rapid technological and societal shifts? Moderator Lewis Leiboh (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) led the conversation with Auditi Chakravarty (AERDF), Libby Hills (Jacobs Foundation), Kyla Johnson-Trammell (Oakland Unified School District), and Susanna Loeb (Stanford Accelerator for Learning).
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Indiana bet big on tutoring for academic recovery. Will lawmakers save the programs when federal funds expire?
In-school tutoring is most effective, researchers say
When considering which programs to fund, Indiana should consider what research says about high-impact tutoring programs, said Nancy Waymack, director of research partnerships and policy for Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator, which provides resources for districts implementing tutoring programs.
High-impact tutoring is delivered one-on-one or in small groups by consistent and well-trained tutors. It happens during the school day up to five days a week, integrated with classroom instruction.
Indiana Learns requires parents to apply for the grant and then schedule and bring their children to lessons. The grant expanded in 2023 to allow tutoring during certain blocks of the school day, such as lunchtime, but it’s not clear how widespread that option is.
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