High Dosage Tutoring Strategy Guide v1

Ensure that there is a clearly articulated purpose and vision for high dosage tutoring. Schools should make decisions around the timing, frequency and duration of tutoring, size of tutoring groups and how to select students and tutors. Additional decisions should be made around tutoring content, communication systems and assessments.

Tutoring during the school day leads to an increased effect size of 0.4 standard deviations. Tutoring during the school day should be supplemental rather than replacing grade level content classroom instruction. Examples of times during the school day include during electives/specials, or during a second block of content instruction. Schools have increased the length of the school day in order to incorporate tutoring into the daily schedule. Tutoring after school leads to an increased effect size of 0.21 standard deviations.

It is important to have a consistent, regularly scheduled time and location in order to increase student participation in tutoring.

Most tutoring programs reporting increased effect sizes have 30-60 minutes of tutoring at least three days each week, with a greater effect size with four to five days per week.

Students who participate in approximately 65 hours of tutoring have shown an increase in achievement.

Effective tutoring lasts less than 20 weeks; more time has not shown to have an increased effect on academic achievement.

Students should be selected using diagnostic assessment data.

One-to-one tutoring is generally more effective for students in preschool or kindergarten. Students in first grade benefit most from either one-to-one tutoring or in groups of two students. For students in second grade and above, tutoring in groups of three or four students is more effective. High Dosage Tutoring is considered to have six or less students per tutoring group.

Schools that used teachers as tutors generally have stronger results compared to schools that use others as tutors.

• Tutoring is most effective when teachers provide instruction. 

• Using paraprofessionals as tutors provided slightly less effectiveness than teachers, but still provided a significant positive impact on academic achievement.

• Using community members, such as college students, or parents resulted in a small positive impact. When using community members or parents, there is a need for additional training and supervision in order to achieve results.

Generally, tutoring in reading has a greater positive impact on younger students compared to older students.

• Reading tutoring has a moderate positive impact for preschoolers and kindergarten students. 

• There is slightly less, but still a significant positive impact of reading tutoring for first grade students. 

• There is a small but positive impact of reading tutoring for students in second through fifth grade. 

• There is a slight increased impact for middle and high school students receiving reading tutoring.

Generally, tutoring in math has a greater positive impact on older students compared to younger students.

• Math tutoring has a moderate positive impact for students in preschool and kindergarten

• There is a slightly less moderate impact on students in first grade.

• The positive impact of math tutoring increases to a moderate level for students in second through fifth grade. 

• On average, there is a small positive impact for middle and high school students receiving general math tutoring although there is research that refers to greater positive impacts for middle and high school students when students participate in high dosage tutoring as defined.

High Dosage Tutoring is more likely to positively impact student achievement when the instructional content of tutoring closely matches the students’ needs. Tutors should use results from students’ diagnostic assessments to determine instructional content during tutoring.

Instructional content during tutoring should also reinforce the core content taught in the regular classroom. Tutoring programs should have systems to regularly communicate what is being taught in the classroom and current performance and misconceptions of students to ensure that tutors can support current classroom instruction

In order to gauge the impact of previous tutoring content as well as determine subsequent tutoring content, student learning should be assessed frequently.