• Why One-on-One Tutoring Outperforms Two-on-One

    | FutureEd

    A new study by Stanford researchers Hsiaolin Hsieh, David Gormley, Carly D. Robinson, and Susanna Loeb suggests why one-on-one tutoring has been found to produce double the gains in student learning than two-on-one tutoring.

    Analyzing 16,629 transcripts from 2022-23 school year tutoring sessions from an earlier study that established the greater gains under one-on-one tutoring, the researchers examined how tutors allocated their time and attention across both one-on-one and two-on-one formats. The tutoring sessions focused on early literacy and served kindergarten through second grade students, with 510 students receiving one-on-one tutoring and 570 students receiving two-on-one tutoring. All students met with their tutor online for 20 minutes during the school day, four times per week.

  • Why Hasn’t Tutoring Been More Effective?

    | Education Week

    The most recent of these, from researchers at Stanford University’s SCALE Initiative, examined math and reading tutoring programs in a large, urban district during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. Neither led to overall gains in academic achievement.

    But when researchers dug deeper into the data, they identified implementation problems that could be driving these null effects.

    The findings add to a growing body of evidence around tutoring in a post-COVID landscape that suggests the effectiveness of a program hinges on the nitty-gritty details of how it is run—how often students meet with their tutors, for instance, or whether lessons are tailored to their specific needs.

    Studying these implementation details could help school systems build more effective tutoring initiatives in the long run, said Elizabeth Huffaker, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Florida, and the lead author on the SCALE paper.

  • ‘A place where ideas about learning will take root and reach the world’

    | Stanford Report

    Stanford has officially dedicated the new buildings of the Graduate School of Education, completing its journey to create a state-of-the-art hub for education research, teaching, and collaboration at the heart of campus.

  • Lessons from a Failed Texas Tutoring Program

    | The 74

    Experts view the findings as a cautionary tale of how tutoring can go wrong.

    The district had to wait on background checks for tutors, many students were still chronically absent and the tutoring sessions often conflicted with other lessons or special events. As a result, students didn’t receive the 30 hours or more required under a state law mandating tutoring for those who failed the annual state test. Instead of five days a week as planned, 81% of the students attended tutoring three or fewer days, and most students worked with a different tutor every time they attended a session.

    The findings reinforce the importance of protecting the time students are supposed to receive tutoring, said Elizabeth Huffaker, an assistant professor of education at the University of Florida and the lead author of the study.

    High-dosage models — featuring individualized sessions held at least three times a week with the same, well-trained tutor — can still “drive really significant learning gains,” she said, “but in the field, things are always a little bit more complicated.”

  • The non-instructional ways schools are using AI

    | District Administration

    Meanwhile, independent research from Stanford University’s SCALE Initiative underscores how quickly teachers learn to appreciate AI’s potential for improving their workflow.

    The researchers analyzed more than 9,000 teachers who were brand new to the platform SchoolAI over 90 days. What they found was that more than 40% of teachers became “regular” or “power users,” meaning they used the tool for up to 49 days.

    Teachers also relied heavily on chatbot assistants, which accounted for more than 50% of their activity.

    Chris Agnew, director of the Generative AI for Education Hub at Stanford, says AI is challenging many decades-old methods of instruction. However, that’s not a bad thing.

    “We’ve been talking about more authentic assessment means for 25 years and the need to evolve schools to build more focus on durable skills,” Agnew says. “We have not done a great job of doing that, so the silver lining is that AI might force that.”

  • Overdeck Family Foundation Awards $10.6 Million in Grants in Q3 2025

    | Overdeck Family Foundation

    In Q3 2025, our foundation awarded grants totaling over $10 million.

    Our third quarter grantmaking focuses on identifying and fueling the scale of cost-effective programs and solutions that accelerate improvement in key academic and socioemotional outcomes for all children. As always, we place an emphasis on grantmaking and strategic support that unlock innovation, evidence, and growth for our grantees.

    Below, we highlighted just some of the direct impact and ecosystem organizations we’re proud to support this quarter.

    • $1,150,000 over two years to Stanford University’s SCALE Initiative to support research and dissemination efforts related to high-impact tutoring and the use of generative AI in education. The National Student Support Accelerator will use the funding to generate practice-relevant research on high-impact tutoring; develop tools and standards to support implementation at scale; and engage and equip education leaders to make evidence-informed decisions. The Generative AI for Education Hub will conduct foundational research, build practical tools, and drive field-wide engagement, including enhancing its AI Research Repository.

     

  • Virtual tutoring is here to stay. New research points to ways to make it better.

    | Chalkbeat

    Two studies from Stanford University’s 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.

    One study examines the impact of disruptions as revealed through tutor comments, such as “You can’t see me? I’m not sure why you can’t see me” or “Sorry. Did you say something? It was hard to hear.”

    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 Post-Pandemic Promise of High-Impact Tutoring

    | The 74

    As U.S. public schools emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic, longtime education policy wonk Liz Cohen saw that in many places, educators were finally taking tutoring seriously. 

    For a year and a half in 2023 and 2024, Cohen traversed the country, interviewing educators, researchers and policymakers and observing tutoring sessions in seven states and the District of Columbia. 

    Now the vice president of policy for the education group 50CAN, Cohen shares her findings in a new book, out today from Harvard Education Press: The Future of Tutoring: Lessons from 10,000 School District Tutoring Initiatives.

  • Congratulations to Carly Robinson, Recipient of SREE 2025 Early Career Award

    | Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE)

    Congratulations to Carly Robinson, Recipient of SREE 2025 Early Career Award
  • Why tutoring is a logistics problem worth solving

    | District Administration

    As education researchers, we hear directly from district leaders about the realities they and their teams face every day. Leading a school district means weighing competing priorities and managing resources, while finding space for new ideas that promise to strengthen teaching and learning.

    Each of these efforts has value and reflects a commitment to improvement. Yet amid the churn of initiatives, it’s worth remembering the strategies that have been proven to work time and again.

    Tutoring is one of those strategies. Far from a passing trend that fades after a year, high-impact tutoring is a unicorn in the oft-changing tides of education reform: it is both a centuries-old, pedagogically sound and educator-approved way to teach children, and it’s an approach proven by hundreds of rigorous studies over decades.