The United States has a math crisis—and it’s not just the students. It extends to those choosing how to spend federal pandemic relief dollars. Even when they choose the best prescriptions to make up for the pandemic’s learning losses, they are using the wrong dosage. It’s a multiplication problem.

The average student in the U.S. lost the equivalent of half a year of math instruction and a quarter of a year in reading. Many urban school districts that were closed for much of 2020-21, such as St. Louis and New Haven, lost one and a half years, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s start with the national average of half a year.

Let’s complete a math exercise together, focusing on four interventions proven to help students catch up: high-dosage tutoring, an extra period of math instruction, six weeks of summer school, and an extended school year. Pre-pandemic research suggests that the first three types of interventions generate the equivalent of one year, half a year, and a quarter of the typical year’s growth in math, respectively. Let’s assume that students receive the same amount of instruction in each additional week of school as they do during the school year. As illustrated by the chart, if 10% of students in any given district received “high-impact” tutoring, 30% received double periods of math, 75% attended summer school, and 100% went to school for two and a half weeks longer, they would recover half a year of learning.

Challenging? Yes. But doable.

Inadequate responses

Unfortunately, I know of no district coming close to this level of intervention. Nationally, only 2% of students are receiving high-impact tutoring, where they are receiving about three hours a week of tutoring for 36 weeks, or about 108 hours total. Most districts are providing only 15-20 hours and only for a small percentage of students, nowhere near the 10% in my catch-up assumption.

Summer school attendance has been 15% or 20% in many urban districts, light years behind my assumed 75%.

I don’t have national data on the percentage of students receiving double doses of math, but I’m confident it is nowhere near 30%.

Further, very few school districts have extended their school year. The struggle in Richmond, Virginia illustrates the challenge. According to the Education Recovery Scorecard, students in third through eighth grade lost the equivalent of one and a half years of math and reading achievement between 2019 and 2022, more than any other district in Virginia. Starting in the spring of 2021, while schools were still closed, Superintendent Jason Kamras proposed a year-round calendar to help students catch up. Students would have one month off in the summer and four two-week breaks during the school year. Most students would still have 180 school days a year, but the district would select 5,000 students to receive up to 40 days of extra instruction during the breaks. His school board turned him down. Instead, they allowed him to pilot a longer school year in just two of the city’s 54 schools. The two schools started this summer, and student attendance has been strong.

Leadership counts

As illustrated in Richmond, part of the challenge has been the absence of political leadership. To undertake the major reforms that would be required to help students catch up, school district leaders need political air cover.

As a U.S. senator, Lamar Alexander helped push through the latest version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2015, which defined the federal role in K-12 education, returning significant power to the states. But states have largely declined the opportunity to lead, and the education reform effort in the U.S. has been rudderless. We’re a long way from the era when governors such as Bill Clinton (Arkansas), Jim Hunt (North Carolina), brothers George W. Bush (Texas) and Jeb Bush (Florida), as well as Alexander himself (who then led Tennessee) used a combination of the bully pulpit, funding, and policies to push an unprecedented wave of state-led reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.

Only recently have leaders such as Governor Jared Polis in Colorado and Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia begun to make improving students’ outcomes a centerpiece of their agendas, and not just a stage for culture wars.

There are some modest bright spots. Under Commissioner of Education Mike Morath’s leadership, Texas required districts to provide an additional 30 hours a week of small-group instruction to students in the lowest achievement category. It’s unlikely to be enough for many students, but it’s a lot more than what other states are providing.

Many states, such as Tennessee and Colorado, have launched tutoring initiatives—again, a laudable move—but none of these programs have the dosage levels that will produce a meaningful impact.

The federal government provided billions of additional dollars of pandemic-related support. When the American Rescue Plan passed in March of 2021, no one knew how large the achievement losses would be. And, wanting to preserve district flexibility, Congress only required districts to spend 20% of the money on academic catch-up (with a loose definition of what could count). The result was predictable. Much of the funding has gone to salary increases, HVAC systems, or additional school counselors. In the worst cases, states have allowed communities to use the federal funds to replace local tax revenues—a shell game that will help exactly zero children. In the end, only a small share of federal aid has been used to replace what students lost during the pandemic: instructional time.

Looking ahead

With a legal deadline to commit the funds by September 2024, school districts have one more year to spend their federal relief dollars. Given that budgets have been set and the 2023-24 school year is about to begin, it will be difficult for districts to scale up their plans for the coming school year. However, there is still time for districts to plan a major scale-up of summer learning for the summer of 2024. There’s even some hope of continuing the effort beyond next summer. Although the American Rescue Plan law requires districts to commit the funds by next September, the federal Department of Education has the authority to allow districts to spend down those funds over the following year (the legal term is “liquidate”), as long as the contracts are signed and the funds are obligated by the deadline. The Biden administration should prioritize extending the spending deadline for programs that increase students’ instructional time—tutoring programs, summer learning, after-school programs, school vacation academies, and salary increases associated with an extended school year.

Although there’s still hope that districts will help younger students catch up, we cannot forget that four high school graduating classes—roughly 12 million students—have already started their postsecondary careers. The data suggest it’s been a rough start. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, community college enrollment declined by a staggering 20% between spring 2019 and spring 2023. The number of students seeking bachelor’s degrees at public and private colleges declined by 6%.

We know remarkably little about what has driven the declines in postsecondary enrollment. Many have speculated that the hot labor market was to blame. However, there’s little concrete evidence to confirm this. It is also possible that the decline was connected to the learning losses in K-12. For instance, especially in areas that spent much of the 2020-21 school year in remote instruction, the high school graduating classes of 2020 and 2021 would have had a hard time meeting with their college counselors to explore their postsecondary options and get help with financial aid.

Moreover, students who fell behind in math or reading in eighth through 10th grades may not have had time to complete the advanced high school coursework expected of many science and engineering majors. According to the College Board, the number of students taking Advanced Placement exams in biology and calculus (both AB and BC) fell by 9% and 12%, respectively, while the number of students taking the chemistry exam declined by 21%. Even if college enrollment rates recover, such trends do not bode well for what may happen to the number of college students pursuing STEM degrees in the coming years.

State leadership need

To resolve this question, we need more research on the relationship between achievement losses, school closures, and changes in postsecondary enrollment by high school. The answer is of more than academic interest as the pace of recovery in the postsecondary sector may well depend on recovery in elementary and secondary schools.

Because many students will not have caught up by the time the federal relief dollars are spent, we must begin discussing additional policies to continue the recovery following September 2024. Anything requiring a school board vote or state legislative action will take time to enact.

For one, states and cities should set aside resources for reaching out to recent high school graduates who never enrolled in college and offer assistance in exploring postsecondary options and applying for federal financial aid. It would be foolish to allow them to fall through the cracks, as the nation’s future workforce needs will depend on their continued training and development.

In addition, states should ensure that future graduating classes have what they need before leaving high school. For instance, students who do not achieve proficiency on state tests at the end of eighth grade should receive additional help during ninth grade to ensure that they are on track for college and a career. States might consider offering students the option of a fifth year in high school or free tuition for their first year in community college, giving them a chance to fill in gaps in coursework they missed in high school as a result of pandemic achievement losses.

The academic recovery effort following the pandemic has been undersized from the beginning. Although the research community and federal and state regulators encouraged districts to focus on “evidence-based” solutions such as high-dosage tutoring and summer learning, districts were never given clear guidance on the dosages required or the share of students they should be serving. Moreover, the guidance that was provided—specifically, the 20% minimum spending on “academic recovery”—was downright misleading.

The future consequence for students—and for the nation’s economy—if students fail to catch up will be dire. A conservative estimate of the loss in future earnings for those enrolled in public K-12 education during the 2020-21 school year is $900 billion. As the federal relief dollars are spent down, state and local leaders must step up. Today, there are two or three candidates seeking the mantle of “education governor.” We need 50 of them.

July, 2024 Update: I wrote this essay late last summer, while the evidence was at its bleakest: districts were struggling to implement recovery efforts and researchers were reporting disappointing results for specific recovery efforts. Subsequently, the prospects of recovery brightened somewhat. In January 2024, our Harvard/Stanford team of researchers . In June 2024, we . We found that the federal relief did have an impact on the recovery. Even though the impact per dollar spent was much smaller than if the funding had been spent solely on tutoring or learning, the estimated impact was nevertheless in line with pre-pandemic research on the effect of general revenue increases. The projected earnings impact from the improvement was sufficient to justify the expenditure.

ESSER relief was like the first stage of a rocket: powerful, but unfocused and likely insufficient to get us all the way back to 2019 levels of achievement. After the 2024 NAEP is released in January 2025, we expect to update the Education Recovery Scorecard with district recovery through 2024. Soon after, we expect to write a second report on the impact of ESSER spending during 2023-24. We hope we are wrong, but our results thus far imply that many districts will remain behind 2019 levels when the federal money runs out. 

It is alarming, then, that so many states have not even begun to discuss what they will do to continue the recovery after September 2024. Rather than provide additional general revenue as with ESSER, we hope states consider targeting aid at specific evidence-based solutions, such as tutoring or summer learning, especially in the districts which will remain behind. Otherwise, we will be forcing children to pay the price for the pandemic.

See more from the Center on Reinventing Public Education and its .

As North Carolina celebrates the for K-3 teachers and literacy gains for young students, nearly half of of early-grade students are still below grade-level benchmarks.

Part of the solution, told the State Board of Education last week, is high-dosage tutoring, an evidence-based intervention for learning loss. Ed Corps was launched in 2020 at the start of the pandemic and during remote learning and is aligned with state-level standards for literacy.

“You’ve heard the phrase that it takes a village — we are working to equip the village beyond educators, specifically as high-impact tutors,” NC Ed Corps Executive Director John-Paul Smith told the Board. “For students who are starting behind coming into school, what they need is not only strong core instruction, but they also need some additional intervention, supplemental support. So that’s what the high-impact tutors are helping to provide.”

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Since 2021-22, Ed Corps has placed and supported nearly 1,300 corps members who have tutored more than 22,000 K-5 graders across 32 counties. This was supported through a mix of Covid-relief and private funds.

Ed Corps is important, Smith said, because it is difficult for districts to implement high-dosage tutoring at scale alone. Finding high-impact tutors, training coaching paraprofessionals, tracking sessions, and identifying funds to pay for the tutoring all present a challenge.

“With your support, NC Education Corps is addressing these challenges, in alignment with high-impact tutoring best practices and the MTSS framework,” Smith’s presentation to the Board said.

Ed Corps started as an initiative of the Board, along with the Office of the Governor, in September 2020. Today, it operates as a 501(c)(3).

Here’s a look at some of the main components of Ed Corps’ model.

• Frequency: Tutors meet with students for at least three sessions each week, 30 minutes per session.
• Measurement: Schools use data to tailor instruction and ensure consistency.
• Small groups: Tutors work with 1-4 students to provide structured, targeted instruction and relationship-based support.
• Curriculum: Tutors use curriculum to reinforce foundational skills.
• Trained personnel: Tutors gain knowledge and skills needed to improve student outcomes, and receive professional development and coaching support.

Dr. Paula Wilkins, chief academic officer at , spoke about the impact of the program in the district. During the 2023-24 school year, 432 students from 10 schools were served by 23 tutors in literacy skills.

“This is only one piece in a bigger, larger puzzle for our district, but we need more,” Wilkins said. “We need more help, and we need more funding to help… This work takes funding and support and intention.”

In addition to the , Smith said the expansion of private school vouchers and the upcoming election also increase financial uncertainty for districts.

In light of the reality that many districts will have less money to fund high-dosage tutoring, Smith said Ed Corps will be working to secure more funding from the state.

According to Smith’s presentation, the program costs roughly $1,200 per student to implement. Schools pay about $650 per student, primarily to pay for the tutoring wages. Ed Corps pays about $550 per student, which covers recruitment, training, coaching, and evaluation.

“We need your help in communicating that high-impact tutoring is not just ‘a nice to have.’ It’s really ‘a need to have’ if we truly do want all students to have the support that they need, starting early on, to succeed,” Smith said. “We need to continue to communicate that it’s going to take a while to see gains. Students are starting pretty far behind, and the gains that they’re making take a little while to show up on the academic assessment — we need to be patient.”

More on high-dosage tutoring model

According to Ed Corps’ website, high-impact tutoring “has been proven to provide significant learning gains for students in need.”

Ed Corps tutors work in Title I and/or low-performing schools, with students scoring below grade-level in reading and/or math. Based on served by tutors in 2022-23, 70.3% of students were identified as socioeconomically disadvantaged,
38.9% Black, 30.6% white, 20.8% Hispanic, 7.7% mixed race, and 0.3% American Indian.

“Tutors are working with high-need students in high-need schools to help them establish foundational literacy and math skills that are so critical to student success in school and future careers,” .

Literacy tutors are recruited, trained, and coached by Ed Corps. The tutors then work as part-time employees at partnering school districts, who pay for tutor time. Most tutors work 15 hours per week, but tutors can work up to 30 hours a week.

Tutors work with students during the school day — either joining them in the classroom or pulling them out of class for a session, depending on the school’s preference.

The vast majority of tutors are retired educators, Smith said, along with parents, community college students, and other retirees.

“High-dosage tutors are not simply providing homework help or reading aloud to students on an irregular basis,” the . “They provide personalized instructional support to students as extensions of school instructional teams in alignment with multi-tiered systems of student support and as a supplement to core instruction.”

During the 2023-24 school year, Ed Corps launched K-5 math tutoring in Ashe, Chatham, Orange, and New Hanover counties.

Moving forward, Smith said they want to expand high-dosage tutoring to more schools, including math tutoring, based on school demand and funding availability.

Next school year, Ed Corps will partner with , a national organization that supports various tutoring models that improve student outcomes. Accelerate is also “supporting promising tutoring initiatives in Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana, and Ohio,” according

They are also working to strengthen data collection and accountability measures, Smith said, “to assess more precisely tutor impact on skills tutored.”

N.C. State University’s Friday Institute and the Duke Social Science Research Institute started conducting a three-year mixed-methods evaluation of Ed Corps in spring 2021. You can read more about that evaluation on page 11 of the organization’s

Finally, the team is also working to deepen and diversify its funding. Ed Corps is asking North Carolina lawmakers to convert non-recurring state funding to recurring funds in order to secure the continuation of tutoring sessions into the 2025-26 school year.

“We appreciate the state’s support for our partnership with NC Education Corps and need it to fund in-person high-impact tutoring on a recurring basis to close opportunity gaps and set up all students for success in school and life,” New Hanover County Schools Superintendent Dr. Charles Foust said, as quoted in Ed Corps’ presentation.

To learn more about partnering or tutoring with NC Education Corps, you can visit

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The today announced district funding for its high dosage tutoring initiative “Learning Acceleration Program: High-Impact Tutoring.” The department, which initially said funding would be announced Oct. 11, said earlier this week that funding would not be announced until December pushing implementation into the new year.

New Jersey’s $52 million high-dosage tutoring program is months behind schedule — leaving thousands of students without urgently-needed academic help until after the new year.

Announced in , the “Learning Acceleration Program: High-Impact Tutoring” offered 570 of the state’s 665 districts up to $768,000 each to provide third and fourth grade students tutoring at least twice a week.

Originally set to begin October 11, districts will only just be finding out in December if they’ve been funded, causing frustration among New Jersey superintendents unaware of when they can either pay staff to offer the help or contract with tutoring companies.

If funding isn’t finalized until December, superintendents say they won’t be able to begin any tutoring initiatives until after the holidays, according to . 

“The sad reality is that for months there’s been millions and millions of dollars allocated to tutoring and they’ve just been sitting there meanwhile we have children in classrooms who need additional support,” Paula White, executive director of , told ����Ӱ��. 

The delays come as New Jersey’s spring 2022 show a decline in math and English language arts scores — particularly among third and fourth grade students who are targeted for the program.

Russell Rogers, superintendent of Vernon Township School District, said he is uncertain of when his district will get funding after applying for $150,000 to hire a tutoring company.

Despite choosing a tutoring company from the state’s approved list, Rogers said his district is now being required to fill out more paperwork.

“It’s a whole drawn out process,” Rogers told ����Ӱ��. “I don’t think anyone’s going to be able to start by the time they thought they would.”

Vernon Township School District is one of many districts that remain confused about what to do after the New Jersey Department of Education on October 11 for those seeking to hire a tutoring company.

Like Rogers, Paterson Public Schools spokesman Daniel Juan told ����Ӱ�� his district is still in limbo whether they’ve been approved for funding. 

New Jersey Department of Education spokeswoman Laura Frederick told ����Ӱ�� funding amounts per district will be announced “shortly” but did not specify an exact date.

As districts wait for updates, advocates who attended the late October told ����Ӱ�� acting state department of education commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan confirmed funding will begin in December.

“I know that many of you are very concerned about [high-impact tutoring],” Allen-McMillan said at the workshop. “We thank you for your patience and know that we are working to advance this as quickly as possible.”

Educators and advocates were skeptical. 

“We don’t have a lot of faith in what is being said…[and] I don’t know if December is going to happen,” one advocate who attended the workshop told ����Ӱ�� anonymously to protect their identity. 

White added how tutoring funds likely starting in December raises “huge flags.”

“We will essentially have lost the better part of the school year,” White said. “There’s no question that we have compromised the ability to optimize our students’ learning by delaying this program.”

Shennell McCloud, chief executive officer of and parent to three young children, said the delays have been detrimental for students across New Jersey — particularly those in urban districts with mostly Black and brown students.

“It’s devastating to me that we have not received any confirmation on tutoring programs,” McCloud told ����Ӱ��.

“Having access to a tutoring program that offers extended learning to even my own children would be beneficial to help get ahead of the learning loss they may be experiencing that I’m not even completely clear about,” she added.

In spring 2022, less than half of third and fourth grade students passed math and English language arts.

For third graders, 45.4% passed math and 42.4% passed ELA — a drop of 9.7% and 7.8% respectively compared to 2019.

For fourth graders, 39.4% passed math and 49.4% passed ELA — a drop of 11.6% and 8% respectively compared to 2019.

“No matter what is happening and no matter why we’re delayed, we need to get this programming to our communities that need it most,” McCloud said.

Currently being studied in a randomized trial at five high schools in and around Oklahoma City and bringing individualized help to 183 students since 2021, the rolled out at a critical moment.

Roughly according to the latest NAEP results, or the Nation’s Report Card — the . Oklahoma’s students scored 10 points below average, outperformed by 43 states. The state has also to fill vacancies.

Researchers high dosage tutoring as a powerful intervention for struggling learners. Beyond academic growth, it has the potential to boost feelings of belonging. A in particular can help students graduate high school, persist through college and earn more later in life. 

Yet many K-12 schools struggle to establish quality in-house tutoring, given the strain on finances and staff. High quality programs are costly, between ongoing training, reasonable compensation and research.

Now in its second year, the program at the University of Oklahoma has honed in on a local solution, looking to expand partnerships between universities and their surrounding K-12 schools.

“It’s going to be an everyday thing until we can catch up as many kids as we can and eliminate the issue altogether in the state,” said program director and veteran educator Cristina Moershel. 

Each tutor is paired with two students for a full 50-minute period, three days a week. They’re compensated $10,000 each year, split between scholarships and stipends.

Marcus Ake, a second year tutor studying meteorology, math and German, starts some periods off the page. He asks students, look around the room, what math do you see? From right angles on white boards to parabolas in desk chairs, “I just want to show everyone else that math is all around.”

Of the 9th grade students served by OU tutors, 42% more than doubled the average expected growth on the NWEA Map math test in just one semester. On average, students gained 3.41 points, over a point beyond the average 2.24. Scores for students at one school grew 8 points, about four times the average.

The jump is a big deal. Students are those most likely to not show huge gains, closing out 8th grade scoring in the 15-25th percentile. But if they continue at this rate, they will reach the 50th by the end of 9th grade. 

“They’re basically beating projections for students who are at the 50th percentile by a full point,” said Daniel Hamlin, professor and lead researcher for the project at the University of Oklahoma. “It’s actually really substantial.” 

Getting creative

Contrary to tutoring programs that support with homework help or replicate a lead teachers’ lessons, OU tutors fill foundational gaps in math that vary student to student. There’s no script: Tutors stop and start wherever students need, pulling a page from mastery instruction.

For many, the starting place is multiplying and dividing fractions, exponents and cubed roots. Others need a refresher on integers and adding like terms before they add variables to the mix. 

Tutors make games and songs for algorithms like the Pythagorean theorem, cut and color code paper to bring life back into what used to feel like confusing, irrational rules like the switch-flip method for dividing fractions.

It’s the individualized attention many wealthy families pay for. But for the hundreds of students now involved, many of whom are first generation or low-income Americans, the support wouldn’t be possible without it being free and during the school day. 

The Stephenson family, who , wanted to target instruction to the kids who most needed support and would not be able to afford it otherwise. Their interest piqued after reading research out of the University of Chicago and Saga Education, which shaped the foundations for OU’s program. 

Recruiting college students to tutor and mentor may also give students faster access to adults that look like them or relate to their life experiences. In the last two years, OU tutors represented 17 countries. This fall semester, 7% identified as Native American or American Indian, 15% as Asian, 15% as Black and 17% as Latino. 

And exposure to college students means exposure to college pathways. Most of the 158 tutors are working toward STEM, economics, or healthcare-related degrees, often able to share with students how they continue to use math everyday, or answer questions about what college actually looks like. 

For first semester tutor and computer engineering student Anurag Rajkumar Doré, the reality check includes breaking down the stigma or shame many kids feel about math. 

“I remember the first couple sessions. They wouldn’t even talk because they were afraid of getting the wrong answer. But I told them, ‘I don’t care if you have the wrong answer as long as you have the right reason,’” Doré said. 

“At the end of the day, math is more about understanding what’s happening than just memorizing steps…when you apply math to the real world, you’re not going to have a list of answers.”

First-time OU tutors go through a three day bootcamp at the start of the semester, learning a mix of pedagogical strategies while refreshing key math concepts. They attend weekly training for one to two hours, planning lessons and getting feedback from each other and veteran educators.  

Those involved say the high-quality training is a key ingredient for the model’s success. 

Doré sometimes messes up on purpose, so his two students see it as normal and practice explaining a different approach. He knows they hesitate with fractions, so naturally he gives bigger and bigger ones. Most recently, 180 over 360 times 35 over 35. The examples drive home the importance of simplifying first — math and many of life’s problems. 

The Initiative is one of three jobs he balances, but he never thinks about giving it up. Some days he feels he’s taught them more about confidence than math.

“I’m able to pay rent because of this program,” Dore said. “I can do all this and I can still help the community.”

Growing pains 

What started at two high schools has now grown to five — two rural, two midsize urban, and one large urban, all with their share of logistical hurdles and lessons learned. 

While the university picks up much of the financial and staffing hurdles, the model leans on high schools to get everyone on the same page so there’s no stigma or misinformation spread. Some parents were apprehensive, for instance, when their child qualified for tutoring.

“It may be that their child in eighth grade had an A in eighth grade math, but then they’re testing in the 20th percentile. Parents may say, ‘Well, my child is doing just fine,’ ” explained lead researcher Hamlin. “There’s a lot of communication that needs to be done with parents and schools and it has to be on an ongoing basis.”

The excitement tutors like Marcus Ake feel on day one is not always shared by students, either. One in particular was chronically absent, sometimes walking the halls. 

“The very first thing they said to me was ‘look, I know I’m bad at math. I don’t need you to tell me that,’ ” he said. 

Ake stressed the truth: “I’m not here for that… I’m literally here to hang out and do some math at the same time. This is low stress.” By the end of the semester, the student showed up every day, and asked if Ake would be there next semester.

Oklahoma has established an , but administrators told ����Ӱ�� a main draw of this partnership was the fact that it supports students within the school day. 

“You’re going to be really challenged to get kids to skip football practice, or not have their part time job or go home to take a nap,” said Chris Brewster, Superintendent for Santa Fe South schools.

Their high school, he said, was lucky — already offering a foundational math class for students who needed another dose. Accordingly, they didn’t have to hire an outside teacher of record or do any scheduling gymnastics to get kids enrolled.

Some school sites approached for the partnership declined, citing those very barriers. They couldn’t spare a teacher to supervise the period or didn’t want to take away student electives.

“These are very costly interventions. I can’t imagine at this point, if I had to bear that cost,” Brewster added. 

OU is gearing up for the long haul, to establish a center that will serve as a hub for high-dosage tutoring in the state. Talks with other universities have begun, including a March symposium to share training and funding resources, like local foundations, banks and national organizations.

On the research end, the University will look into how the program has affected discipline, attendance, tardiness rates and student GPAs, to publish early findings later this spring. Next year, they’ll study how effective a 3:1 student to tutor pairing can be.

Students say the tutoring is, “giving them confidence in math that they didn’t have before and that the relationship with their tutors is meaningful… something that makes them happy about being at school,” Hamlin added.

Other tutoring offerings often pair students with many instructors, and if virtual, can make it difficult for students to build trust and comfort. 

For Ake, who supports two students with completely opposite learning styles, the common denominator is a human one. They talk school drama, weekend plans, birthdays, track meets or whatever students bring up offhand during the period.  

“Showing an interest in their lives has gone a long way,” he said. “I can show them that I’m not just some stranger but I am someone who cares about them as well.”