The number of students unlikely to reach end-of-year proficiency means instruction has grown significantly more challenging for teachers in classrooms that remain as academically diverse as before the pandemic,油 contend.

“With more students starting further behind, teachers must help many achieve nearly three times the typical annual academic growth���a herculean task,” said Dr. Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and analytics at NWEA.

Because pre-pandemic approaches to intervention may not be enough to accelerate academic growth, teachers need油professional learning and preparation programs that address today’s challenges, the report points out.

The researchers recommend that district leaders:

1. Build schedules that protect time for small-group instruction and collaborative planning.
2. Provide practical, job-embedded PD where teachers can rehearse and refine new approaches using their own curriculum.
3. Use interim data in simple routines to check progress and adjust instruction along the way.

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“Teachers must leverage every single minute of a day to grouping students flexibly, choosing the right scaffolds, checking for understanding, and adjusting in real time to drive the needed academic growth,” said Jenna Talos, former teacher and current instructional coach at NWEA.

In the fall of 2019, nearly two-thirds of the students in a typical fifth-grade math class were not on track for year-end proficiency. About a quarter would have been expected to reach grade level, while just 13% could be classified as “advanced.”

Five years later, the number of off-track students needing more help油climbed over 70%, the report found. “Even modest percentage shifts like this matter instructionally because they increase the number of students who need accelerated growth within an already diverse classroom,” the report states.

Students are also farther from proficiency. Just before COVID, off-track students were about 2.45 years behind in math. Now, these students need 2.65 years of growth in a single year to reach grade level.

“When more students require sustained acceleration at the same time, teachers need support structures that reflect that reality,” the report concludes. “They should not be expected to manage these demands alone.”

Technical question:油Why schools should worry about the AI-adoption gap

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Although many districts have adopted early literacy initiatives since the COVID-19 pandemic, the reality is that many students are ill-prepared for the rigors of middle school, particularly in reading, according to a from NWEA, a K12 assessment and research organization.

The data is underscored by recent assessment results from the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP), which found that only 30% of eighth-grade students are performing at or above NAEP proficiency.

The researchers contend that this is a result of a lack of explicit, structured reading instruction, even as students are expected to comprehend increasingly complex materials across different subjects.

“Our current middle and high schoolers were just starting their literacy journey when the pandemic hit, and we cannot lessen the urgency to support them,” said Miah Daughtery, vice president of content advocacy-literacy at NWEA.

The report calls on policymakers and district leaders to adopt a systems-level approach油that supports both early learners and the unique literacy needs of middle and high school油students.

Here are four ways to better support reading instruction:

• Use high-quality, grade-appropriate assessments that provide data on the literacy needs of middle schoolers.
• Create flexible schedules to promote literacy development throughout the entire school day and make more effective use of instructional time.
• Understand the unique literacy needs of middle schoolers from a district-level perspective and invest in teacher professional learning in all disciplines, including at the upper grades.
• Curate relationships with external partners who share similar goals in improving literacy outcomes and can reinforce literacy development beyond school hours.

Read the full report .

Find your next story using the slideshow below.

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Other valuable metrics include:

• Student performance at the start of the school year (25%)
• Number of students enrolled in summer learning programs (25%)
• Parent/participant feedback and evaluations of the programs (9%)
• Some other way (9%)

More specifically, superintendents in smaller districts are more likely than their counterparts to say improved test scores are the primary measure of their summer program’s effectiveness (39% vs. 28%, respectively). Likewise, superintendents in lower-income districts (40%) are more likely than medium-income (32%) and higher-income districts (27%) to judge success based on test scores.

Given superintendents’ attention to student academics, it’s not surprising that they view 馨温庄稼岳温庄稼庄稼乙油看姻油庄馨沿姻看厩庄稼乙油academic skills as the primary benefit of summer learning opportunities. Seventy-three percent of leaders say academic skills are the most important benefit of such learning, and 87% rate it as one of the top three benefits.

Barriers to participation

Many superintendents agree that several barriers get in the way of students’ access to summer school.

Three-quarters say scheduling conflicts with parents’ work schedules, followed by:

• Scheduling conflicts with children’s activities (65%)
• Lack of interest among children (55%)
• Lack of transportation (45%)

“Again, superintendents may primarily be thinking about summer programs their district offers at no or low cost to families, while parents may be considering more costly activities run by private organizations,” the survey reads.

As superintendents gear up for this year’s summer programming, Gallup recommends leaders consider:

• Superintendents value summer learning to a high degree, and most demonstrate their commitment by ensuring their district’s programs offer such learning to their students.
• Many superintendents say their district distributes information about summer learning opportunities to their community.
• Though school districts could have used ARPA funds for school functions, many have expanded existing summer programs or created new ones.

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Tutoring and other methods of “learning acceleration” were hampered by a lack of flexibility, resources and teacher preparation, according to .

Returning to in-person instruction was also hampered by political conflicts and a mental health crisis as K12 administrators operated with “little federal or state guidance.” Now, the report contends: “Many districts have reverted to pre-pandemic practices while grappling with declining enrollment, budget deficits, and persistent learning losses.”

On the move: One of the nation���s biggest districts picks a new leader 油

Newer challenges have emerged in recent years. ESSER relief funds expired at the same time declining enrollment was sapping revenues from many districts. More recently, new Education Secretary Linda McMahon began laying off half of the Department of Education’s staff and President Donald Trump has ordered the agency to shut down.

“The Trump administration���s attack on the U.S. Department of Education will also create challenges,” the report notes. “Districts will likely face less federal money, obfuscation around how to best serve students with special needs, and new pressures to shift funding away from current beneficiaries. ”

How to jumpstart academic recovery

The solutions start with reallocating resources and redeploying talent similarly to how K12 leaders adjusted when schools first closed in 2020. “They need to consider ideas that were abandoned early in the pandemic���and ask for state and civic leaders to support these initiatives,” the report asserts.

The recommendations, taken verbatim from the report, include:

• Teaching all students at grade level but intervening quickly when a child shows
  evidence of missing a necessary idea or skill.
• Reconfiguring school staffing so some teachers are instantly available to help
  students who are falling behind
• Establishing learning pods for students who resist returning to the regular classroom
  and recruiting community partners to support the teachers who staff these pods
• Closely tracking student progress and promptly informing parents, teachers, and
  school leaders about whether students are making normal progress
• Providing alternatives for students who are not learning well in their current schools

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Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores fell over the last two years, continuing declines recorded just before the pandemic in 2019, according to , also known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Fourth-grade math scores improved two points between 2022 and 2024 after a five-point drop over the three years prior. Eighth-grade math scores were flat.

More from 91心頭: K12 leaders are now vowing to defy ICE agents

���Overall, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance,��� said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which produces the Nation’s Report Card. ���Where there are signs of recovery, they are mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students. Lower-performing students are struggling, especially in reading.���

Nation’s Report Card 2024

The percentage of eighth graders not reaching basic proficiency in reading was the highest in the history of the report card. Fourth graders showed the lowest proficiency in 20 years.

Reading results also showed widening gaps between higher- and lower-performing students, with the former regaining ground and the latter stagnating or declining.

Achievement gaps were widest in eighth-grade math scores and also grew in fourth grade as higher-performing students’ showed improvements.

The Trump administration’s new U.S. Department of Education called the results “heartbreaking.”

“Not only did most students not recover from pandemic-related learning loss, but those students who were the most behind and needed the most support have fallen even further behind,” the agency said in a statement.

“Despite the billions of dollars that the federal government invests in K-12 education annually, and the approximately $190 billion in federal pandemic funds, our education system continues to fail students across the nation.

Signs of progress

The Report Card also tracks attendance and found that absenteeism has declined since the last national assessment was released in 2022 but remains higher than it was before the pandemic.

Another sign of progress appears in fourth-grade math. Scores improved in 15 states and 14 urban districts. Several urban districts gained as many as 10 points, which is above the national average.

This story is being updated.

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Data from , a coalition of nonprofit organizations partnering with schools and districts to scale student success systems, suggest that the “national rebound” in graduation rates is masked by large states like New York and California that waived graduation requirements. But after taking a closer look, the researchers uncovered that 26 states had lower graduation rates in 2022 than in 2019. Furthermore, less than half of the nation’s districts (43%) saw rebounds in their high school graduation rates in 2022.

“The data we’ve collected sheds much-needed light on the pandemic’s deep and varied effects on students across the country,” said Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, which helps lead the GRAD Partnership coalition.

More from 91心頭: These are the nation���s best elementary and middle schools

The researchers also identified several contributors that dragged down graduation rates. For instance, a district that spent more time in remote and hybrid learning during the 2020-21 school year recorded lower graduation rates that same year. However, when states waived high school exit exam requirements, district graduation rates in those states improved.

Students who were in sixth or seventh grade when the pandemic hit appear to have been impacted the most. The full toll of the pandemic on educational attainment may not be fully reflected in currently available secondary school data, according to the report.

Overall, the report reflects a complex picture of the pandemic’s immediate and potential long-term effects on educational attainment. We encourage you to read the report yourself to learn more about which areas your district may need more support to meet this year’s academic goals.

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If, like most educators, you are seeing continued evidence that not all students have fully recovered from the disruptions of COVID and online learning. The first report, from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, finds that students are catching up thanks to tutoring, high-quality curricula, and extended learning time.

The organization, also known as CRPE, cites research showing students have regained about a third of their pandemic-era learning losses in math and a quarter in reading but also contends that high-dosage tutoring and other proven strategies are not reaching enough students. This hobbled academic recovery has the biggest impact on younger and low-income students.

CRPE also warns that schools are facing the “gale-force headwinds” of declining teacher morale, students’ growing mental health needs and post-ESSER financial peril. The report urges educators to deploy programs such as to help ninth graders build strong school relationships. K12 leaders are further encouraged to provide teachers and other staff with dedicated time to connect with parents and families. More flexible schedules and staffing would create ample time for core instruction and”pullout” programs such a tutoring and special education services.

Finally, the report emphasizes “real accountability.” It calls on state leaders to give parents better information about their child’s academic performance beyond traditional report cards and ensure schools can provide teachers with complete student data to identify needed interventions.

Civic empowerment

Another report on the American student experience could encourage K12 leaders to provide high school students with more opportunities to create change in their communities.

A YouthTurth survey of more than 115,000 higher schools found:

• Strong civic dispositions but skills lacking: “Most high school students want to help others and work across differences to improve society. However, fewer than half report learning the necessary civic skills in school, and fewer than a third have been empowered to create positive change in their communities.”
• Inequitable civic preparedness: “Civic readiness is uneven among high school students. Those with parents holding advanced degrees stand out as most civically prepared, while Hispanic/Latinx students are significantly less civically empowered than other racial groups.”
• Only half agree voting matters: “Overall, 53% of high school students believe that voting is important. School size and location do not significantly affect students’ belief in the importance of voting. However, significant differences in this belief exist based on student demographics.”
• Civic engagement thrives in extracurriculars: “Students describe academic work as disconnected from public life and a barrier to civic engagement, but they find participation in clubs, activities, and sports teams civically empowering.”

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While the type of intensive or ���high-dosage��� tutoring made possible by this expanded workforce has been shown to have powerful positive effects on academic performance, the success of a new tutoring initiative hinges on its implementation. Indeed, some early proponents of tutoring as a post-pandemic silver bullet have recently , in part because of implementation challenges at a large scale.

Implementing any kind of major intervention in schools at a rapid pace is notoriously hard���a fact we know firsthand as former educators and education researchers at MDRC.

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Based on our experience helping schools adopt new practices, we recommend that school leaders commit to the following four strategies to maximize their chances of helping new or expanded tutoring programs take root.

Plan for absenteeism

While many factors can interfere with students’ access to a new program at school, absenteeism is one of the biggest concerns. In the , our evaluation of high-dosage tutoring in eight sites around the country conducted with the University of Chicago Education Lab, tutors have cited student absenteeism from school as a leading reason for students missing their tutoring sessions.

Given the national challenge of chronic absenteeism, schools must account for this issue when implementing a new intervention, either by incorporating strategies to reduce absenteeism into the program or by planning for mitigation strategies when attendance challenges inevitably emerge.

Be strategic about scheduling

Adapting school schedules to accommodate a new tutoring program is often an obstacle to change. Ideally, tutoring should not cut into core instructional time, lunch, physical education or special activities that students often enjoy such as recess or enrichment.

Alternative solutions include designating tutoring sessions as a class in assigned students��� schedules���a strategy used by high schools in a study where math tutoring had positive impacts���or scheduling tutoring during a period set aside for intervention. School leaders should also consider appointing coordinators to provide ongoing scheduling support throughout the year, a strategy used by Reading Partners, a tutoring program for which an MDRC study found positive effects.

Build commitment among all staff members

As we showed in our work, it���s important that all staff members���not just those who supervise or administer a new tutoring initiative���understand and support the program’s goals. When school leaders and teachers don���t fully understand a program���s requirements and potential, it���s easy for other school priorities to take precedence and for tutoring sessions to be cancelled.

To get everyone on board with a new or expanded tutoring program, school leaders should widely communicate how the program will benefit students and different staff members. It may also be helpful to involve all staff members from the start in meetings to prepare for launching the program. Once the program is running, leaders can share program data with everyone to celebrate successes and to identify areas for improvement.

Align the new with the old

School leaders can support the transition to a new or expanded tutoring program by aligning it with systems already in place. Aligning new initiatives with an organization���s existing structural elements and with staff members’ goals has long been a tenet of strong implementation of evidence-based interventions.

What alignment looks like will vary widely depending on the school. Still, leaders can start by examining procedures used by existing tutoring or academic interventions at the school: How are students identified to participate in those programs? How is students��� progress monitored? It���s possible that the new tutoring program into preexisting processes and structures.

Just as seedlings require the proper environmental conditions to grow, new school programs require the right conditions to thrive. While the abovementioned strategies are not always easy to execute and require time and money, committing to these strategies will give new high-dosage tutoring initiatives the best shot at realizing their potential.

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If, like most educators, you are seeing continued evidence that not all students have fully recovered from the disruptions of COVID and online learning. The first report, from the Center on Reinventing Public Education, finds that students are catching up thanks to tutoring, high-quality curricula, and extended learning time.

The organization, also known as CRPE, cites research showing students have regained about a third of their pandemic-era learning losses in math and a quarter in reading but also contends that high-dosage tutoring and other proven strategies are not reaching enough students. This hobbled academic recovery has the biggest impact on younger and low-income students.

CRPE also warns that schools are facing the “gale-force headwinds” of declining teacher morale, students’ growing mental health needs and post-ESSER financial peril. The report urges educators to deploy programs such as to help ninth graders build strong school relationships. K12 leaders are further encouraged to provide teachers and other staff with dedicated time to connect with parents and families. More flexible schedules and staffing would create ample time for core instruction and”pullout” programs such a tutoring and special education services.

Finally, the report emphasizes “real accountability.” It calls on state leaders to give parents better information about their child’s academic performance beyond traditional report cards and ensure schools can provide teachers with complete student data to identify needed interventions.

Civic empowerment

Another report on the American student experience could encourage K12 leaders to provide high school students with more opportunities to create change in their communities.

A YouthTruth survey of more than 115,000 higher schools found:

• Strong civic dispositions but skills lacking: “Most high school students want to help others and work across differences to improve society. However, fewer than half report learning the necessary civic skills in school, and fewer than a third have been empowered to create positive change in their communities.”
• Inequitable civic preparedness: “Civic readiness is uneven among high school students. Those with parents holding advanced degrees stand out as most civically prepared, while Hispanic/Latinx students are significantly less civically empowered than other racial groups.”
• Only half agree voting matters: “Overall, 53% of high school students believe that voting is important. School size and location do not significantly affect students’ belief in the importance of voting. However, significant differences in this belief exist based on student demographics.”
• Civic engagement thrives in extracurriculars: “Students describe academic work as disconnected from public life and a barrier to civic engagement, but they find participation in clubs, activities, and sports teams civically empowering.”

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A growing body of research underscores the game-changing impact of tutoring, when designed and delivered according to evidence-based practices known as high-dosage tutoring. At schools that provided tutoring sessions multiple times a week with the same tutor over the course of several months, students saw their academic achievements skyrocket, recovering on average as much as four months in literacy and nearly 10 months in math.

But along the way, it���s become clear that not all tutoring is equal. ���High-dosage tutoring��� became more of a marketing buzzword than a reliable indicator of program quality. The effectiveness of tutoring varies widely. Schools and districts face diverse challenges���from recruiting challenges to scheduling logistics���and what proves effective in one setting may not work in another.

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As the deadline to spend the last of federal pandemic relief aid dollars looms, we must examine the pitfalls to ensure the longevity and success of tutoring programs across the country.

Implementing a high-dosage tutoring program within a school district requires careful planning and investment. While building a district-driven program may be appealing, there are several areas to consider that may make partnering with a vendor to launch and run the program more feasible, affordable and effective.

Here are five reasons why many district tutoring efforts fall short:

1. Struggle to Find Enough���or the Right���Tutors

Finding great subject matter experts to work consistently in the model that high-dosage tutoring requires (2 to 3 sessions per week consistently for at least 10 weeks) is not easy. Many students need individualized instruction support, so the volume of ready tutors needs to be large and flexible.

In conversations with hundreds of district leaders who have tried to build tutoring programs from scratch, I���ve heard common frustrations that there are simply not enough tutors. Most have been bound by geography, faced shortages in high-demand fields or lacked tutors that spoke a student���s native language. When building brick-and-mortar programs, these can all be huge���even insurmountable���challenges.

Some have tried to solve this problem by utilizing their own teachers and other school staff to serve as tutors, failing to recognize that many teachers already feel overworked and do not have the time or a desire to tutor.

Savvy districts are building a hybrid tutoring workforce���leaning on a combination of online, yet face-to-face video-based tutors and cultivating partnerships with local colleges to tap college students and the local business community. For many schools, this hybrid strategy provides a bigger and more diverse tutor pool from which to pull, in addition to being a great opportunity to leverage subject-matter experts with whom students may not otherwise come into contact.

This strategy is also crucial to expanding tutoring programs and adopting the mind shift that tutoring shouldn���t only be for the 8% to 10% of students who are struggling the most academically and need intensive tutoring���but for all students throughout the entire school year.

2. Tutoring Becomes a Scheduling and Logistical Challenge

Consistency matters. The research is clear: Students benefit the most from consistent tutoring embedded into the school day.

Many schools struggle to manage complex tutoring schedules that account for students’ and tutors’ schedules. And logistical hurdles abound for in-person sessions, including directions, transportation, weather and parking���to name just a few. These challenges make maintaining consistency of attendance for students and tutors difficult to sustain and severely complicates the already complex task of providing accurate reporting and evidence of impact for large programs.

The challenge is even greater in small group tutoring models (typically four to five students). In these models, regular monitoring needs to be done if the group of students matched to a tutor needs to be rematched if one or more students are learning at a faster or slower pace.

To support this, schools need strong technology infrastructure that can leverage matching algorithms to not only sync student and tutor schedules and anticipate last-minute staffing gaps but to intelligently connect each student to the right instructor, based on their unique needs. In addition, active data needs to be collected on student learning mastery throughout the engagement to feed the matching algorithms to make recommendations on change.

3. Mismatch Between Classroom Curriculum and Tutoring

I often hear educators��� frustration that students show up to class saying a tutor taught them how to do something���solve an algebra equation or diagram an essay���in a different way than they are teaching it in class. Not only can it be frustrating for the educator, but confusing for the student as they work through the school curriculum.

Districts seeking to partner with an organization to provide tutoring support should seek out programs that don���t operate using their own curriculum and pedagogical point of views, and instead work with the district���s and collaborate with teachers. In order for the tutoring to be effective, as well as to build trust and get maximum buy-in from teachers, tutoring programs need to meet students where they are, using the standards, curriculum and classroom materials they���re already using.

Programs that are content agnostic have managed to side-step this particular challenge more easily. Even better: A program that allows teachers to collaborate directly with tutors and mark exactly where in their class lesson a student needs additional support. Whether virtual or in-person, educators should also receive notes from a student���s tutoring session so that they have insight into how students are progressing during tutoring sessions, or where they are continuing to struggle.

4. Students Are Disengaged Because They Feel Singled Out

Students are sometimes unfairly stigmatized for needing tutoring and it can negatively impact self-esteem, especially if the same chronically low-performing or special needs students are being pulled out of classrooms every day.

But imagine a learning environment in which tutoring and academic enrichment outside of instructional time is part of a school���s culture. Schools where all students receive tutoring support of some ��� even students who are at and above grade-level, who might participate in a Minecraft coding camp or SAT preparation. Schools and districts that embrace a tutoring-for-all mentality are flipping the script on tutoring, transforming it into a widely accepted and normalized way of learning among students.

5. Parents Aren���t Seen as Part of the Solution

Since the onset of remote learning, an increasing number of families are advocating for greater access to tutoring and seeking clarity on its implementation for their children. They are keen to understand their role in helping their kids stay on track and address unfinished learning.

To ensure the success of tutoring programs, districts must establish mechanisms that engage parents and all stakeholders���teachers, tutors, students and families���from the very beginning.

Federal pandemic relief aid dries up at the end of September, but both Democratic-led and Republican-led states have already dedicated funding in their own budgets to continue tutoring programs. There���s even some chatter about tutoring becoming the next big bipartisan school reform.

But to ensure tutoring is impactful, to ensure its staying power and to ensure we meet the moment and take full advantage of the opportunities high-quality and high-dosage tutoring present for students, we must recognize and safeguard against the challenges that have caused tutoring programs to sputter and districts to walk away from the promise they hold.

The future of learning will include more individualized instruction incorporated into the teaching workflow provided by schools. The evidence is clear���high-dosage tutoring has emerged as a promising intervention to address educational disparities and accelerate student learning, for one great reason – proven results backed by evidence. It���s now time to integrate thoughtful models that are affordable, sustainable, and complement the work of educators in the classroom.

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