“High-dosage” tutoring for low-performing students helps close achievement gaps, finds a new study of a Boston charter school’s program.
Tutoring of the kind employed in Match Education schools “is less expensive and has proven far more effective than widely accepted reforms such as reduced class size and extended school days,” said study author Cara Stillings Candal, the study author.
After the tutoring program was implemented in 2005, student achievement gains in Match schools jumped, Candal writes in “Match-ing Students with Excellent Tutors.” A recent statistical analysis found its tutoring program helps students gain approximately an extra year’s worth of instruction. The U.S. Department of Education has cited Match as one of the nation’s most successful charter schools at closing achievement gaps.
The Match Corps, as the program is called, offers recent graduates of top colleges a paid residence and $14,300 stipend. They provide Match students two hours of after-school tutoring each day. The school initially funded the program through donations, then integrated it into its main budget after finding it so effective.
Learn more:
“Matching Students to Excellent Tutors,” Pioneer Institute, February 2014: http://heartland.org/policy-documents/matching-students-excellent-tutors-how-massachusetts-charter-school-bridges-achieve.
—Staff reports
Image by Tulane Public Relations.
Joy Pullmann is a research fellow on education policy for The Heartland Institute and managing editor of The Federalist, a web magazine on politics, policy, and culture.
