Impact of Tutoring on Student Learning:

 Existing evidence of tutoring program impacts indicates that high-dosage tutoring can significantly improve student learning, outperforming other educational interventions. Yet, tutoring is not a onesize-fits-all intervention. The design and implementation of tutoring varies widely across tutoring programs and service providers. It is therefore imperative to understand and contextualize the impact that different tutoring programs have on student learning. 

This research report 

• (i) summarizes existing evidence on tutoring program impact from Nickow et al. (2023), a recent metaanalysis of tutoring program impacts; 
• (ii) constructs a new measure of the efficiency of tutoring program impact, which we define as the hours of tutoring necessary to improve student learning by one month, and compare the efficiency of tutoring program impact across select tutoring providers based on evidence from well-designed randomized control trials (RCTs); 
• (iii) proposes an approach to measure the cost effectiveness of tutoring program impact, which we define as the additional months of student learning produced at a cost of $1,000 per pupil; and 
• (iv) lay out a research agenda calling for significantly more evidence on the specific tutoring programs that improve student learning, for which students, in what educational contexts, at what fiscal cost, and the programmatic features most associated with student achievement gains.

The report shows that tutoring is an intervention with a long history of evidence in support of its effectiveness at improving student learning. However, the evidentiary base is less robust than initially expected. Only 15 of the 89 RCTs included in Nickow et al. (2023) would meet the highest standards of evidence on program impact. This analysis finds that, among a select sample of tutoring providers, math tutoring more efficiently improves student learning (and with less variability) than literacy tutoring.