Takeaways from research on tutoring to address coronavirus learning loss

The Hechinger Report

Prominent members of the education research community are enthusiastically pushing for a dramatic increase in tutoring. The University of Michigan’s Susan Dynarski wrote an OpEd in the New York Times on May 7, arguing for a multi-billion dollar investment in tutoring both to offset shutdown learning loss and to give jobs to unemployed college students and graduates. Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University wrote a May 14, 2020 blog post calling for a “Marshall Plan for education, to recruit, train, and deploy thousands of tutors in schools across America.” He also suggests using new college graduates and having them work with small groups of students. Brown University’s Matthew Kraft is advocating for all students at low-income schools to receive a daily dose of tutoring, either individually or in pairs of students for each tutor, for a full class period during the normal school day for an entire year. He calls it “high-dosage tutoring.” Yes, there’s already an acronym: HDT.