In late 2024, Susanna Loeb, one of the nation’s leading researchers on tutoring, had doubts about the future of a field she’s worked hard to advance.
Over $120 billion in federal COVID relief funds were expiring, leaving school leaders and tutoring providers uncertain whether programs would continue. The incoming administration was focused on slashing Department of Education spending, not issuing new grants.
“We didn’t know if this administration would put anything into education,” said Loeb, a Stanford University professor who studies tutoring programs. “We were worried that all of the experimentation that had been going on and that access to tutoring would drop precipitously.”
That didn’t happen.
When researchers, district leaders and tutoring providers convened earlier this month in Washington, it was clear that worries over tutoring being nothing more than a pandemic fad had turned to optimism. A growing number of states expect districts to integrate tutoring into the school day and have committed funding and staff to make it happen. Several require tutoring for students scoring below grade level and are vetting providers so districts don’t have to. And in a recent round of literacy research grants, totaling $256 million, federal education officials signaled that access to tutoring should be a fixture in the nation’s schools.
“High-dosage tutoring has evolved from a concept into a proven, evidence-based strategy and then into a reality for thousands of students in thousands of schools,” Kirsten Baesler, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, told attendees at the annual Accelerate conference. “It is a foundational strategy for improving student outcomes.”
Even before the new federal grants were announced, a 2025 scan by Loeb’s team showed that nearly half of all states either offer tutoring grants or use their school finance formula to help districts pay for programs.
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