海角大神

Raymond Jiang was scrolling through Instagram this past June 鈥� a way to pass time during a summer of no camps or social gatherings, after a high school freshman year that ended early 鈥� when he came across a post from education innovator Sal Khan.

For this 16-year-old son of Chinese immigrants living in the suburbs of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Mr. Khan was something of a rock star. Mr. Jiang had used Khan Academy, Mr. Khan鈥檚 nonprofit offering free online classes, to pass trigonometry and pre-calculus the summer prior. Now, he saw, Mr. Khan was looking for people to join his newest enterprise: schoolhouse.world, a free, global, online tutoring network.

Mr. Jiang loved calculus. He was thrilled by the idea of working with Mr. Khan himself. So he applied to be one of the organization鈥檚 first math teachers.

A few states away, Carl McGrone was also 鈥渄riving around online just to have something to do,鈥� as he puts it. A 52-year-old Mississippi native who works in a Waterloo, Iowa, pork processing plant, Mr. McGrone was studying to get his high school diploma when he came across Mr. Khan鈥檚 new venture.

Although he is not usually 鈥渁 guy to get involved with something online,鈥� Mr. McGrone signed up to be one of the first students with schoolhouse.world. He met Mr. Jiang in algebra class.聽

鈥淩aymond 鈥� he took me to a whole new level,鈥� Mr. McGrone says.聽

The teen just had a great way of explaining facts, he says. Mr. Jiang, for his part, says he bonded with the older man over their shared interest in wrestling.聽

鈥淭here are so many things I like about it,鈥� says Mr. Jiang, who has tutored everyone from adults such as Mr. McGrone to teenagers worried about their grades. 鈥淚t makes me feel good. I鈥檓 impacting someone鈥檚 life.鈥澛�

As the United States and its schools enter the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, policymakers, educators, and families are struggling to address everything from learning loss among K-12 students to new pressures befalling the country鈥檚 nearly聽7 million adult learners. Increasingly, they are narrowing in on an old, but potentially now groundbreaking, intervention: tutoring.聽

Research shows that tutoring can be hugely effective at closing academic achievement gaps. This has prompted a new, bipartisan push for expanding tutoring in schools, whether through a new national 鈥渢utoring corps,鈥� a constellation of innovative initiatives such as schoolhouse.world, or some combination of both.

But as Mr. Jiang and Mr. McGrone are quick to attest, tutoring can do far more than improve an individual鈥檚 test scores. It can create connections across age and place. It can build a global community and bridge socioeconomic divisions. Indeed, supporters say that there is a chance in this moment to use tutoring not only for pandemic recovery, but also to fundamentally change the way we envision, and deliver, education. Implemented creatively and broadly, tutoring can create a world where grades and school buildings matter far less than they do now, and where everyone, young and old, can become both a teacher and a learner.聽

鈥淲e are having a moment of national enthusiasm about tutoring, motivated by the pandemic and the acute challenges it has presented for student learning,鈥� says Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University who has been at the forefront of the push for a national tutoring corps. 鈥淏ut if we only see tutoring through the lens of COVID recovery, we will lose out on a fundamental opportunity.鈥�

A learning-loss fix

There is no clear consensus about how much learning children have lost from a year of remote and interrupted school. But some educational assessments have revealed substantial dips in both math and reading 鈥� and researchers worry that the impact is greater even than these tests show.聽

The nonprofit assessment group NWEA, for instance, found during its fall testing that children on average scored 5 to 10 percentile points lower in math than they did in 2019. But researchers also noticed that a large number of students hadn鈥檛 taken the assessment at all 鈥� and those who were absent were disproportionately low-income and students of color. In other words, those students most likely to be struggling anyhow were not taking the test, which meant that the results were likely skewed high.

鈥淭he biggest red flag for us is that the kids who are tested are not a representative sample,鈥� says Karyn Lewis, a research scientist at NWEA.

Data released earlier this year from Ohio showed a similar pattern. There, a lower percentage of students scored above the state鈥檚 鈥減roficient鈥� level in reading than at any time in the past four years. Ohio has also reported a dramatic increase in chronic absenteeism, with nearly half of Black students recurringly out of school in sampled districts. This mirrors findings from the nonprofit Bellwether Education Partners, which estimated that 3 million students nationwide 鈥� mainly those most at-risk, such as children who are homeless 鈥� have stopped attending school altogether.聽

Although it is impossible to predict the long-term education impact of all this, statistical models show a clear connection between learning loss, absenteeism, lower college graduation rates, and a decline in lifetime earnings.

鈥淲e鈥檙e still really measuring it,鈥� says Kristin Blagg, senior research associate at the Urban Institute鈥檚 Center on Education Data and Policy. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 right to start thinking about interventions now, since the evidence we have is that there are gaps that are going to need to be mitigated.鈥�

Tutoring is one way, researchers say, to effectively close those gaps. 鈥淲e鈥檝e done a review of research about summer school; we鈥檝e used others to look at the outcomes of after-school programs and extended day 鈥� at adding time to the school day 鈥� all of which are the kinds of things people are talking about,鈥� says Robert Slavin, director of the Center for Research and Reform in Education at Johns Hopkins University. 鈥淎ll of these things, on average, produce positive results. But nothing compared to tutoring.鈥�

When Dr. Slavin talks about tutoring, he means a particular kind of educational connection. He and others describe this as 鈥渉igh impact鈥� or 鈥渉igh dosage鈥� tutoring, where an instructor is matched with either one student or a small group of students, and where tutoring happens multiple times a week, integrated into the school day.聽

New research from the University of Chicago鈥檚 Education Lab found that Chicago public school students who received high-dosage math tutoring learned two to three times as much as their peers.

鈥淚t is one of the most positive results of any education innovation,鈥� says Monica Bhatt, a senior research director with the Education Lab.

Politicians took note. 聽

鈥淎s cities begin to rebuild from the pandemic, leaders across the country should act on these findings and make high-dosage tutoring a priority to support students,鈥� said Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in a press release.聽

Indeed, a number of educational experts and policymakers are calling for a national tutoring corps, which would leverage federal resources to get hundreds of thousands of new tutors inside schools. Using partners such as Saga Education, the nonprofit that ran the tutoring studied by the University of Chicago, and organizations such as AmeriCorps, which already has an infrastructure to connect young people with nonprofits doing the work, the government could dramatically improve education for students across the country, supporters say.

There is precedent for this sort of scaled-up initiative. Both England and the Netherlands have launched tutoring initiatives in hopes of counteracting the educational impact of the pandemic.

It is not only the K-12 students who would benefit from a national tutoring initiative, proponents say. Dr. Slavin, who has pushed for a national tutoring corps, says a federally funded initiative that dramatically expands tutoring programs could also help new college graduates, who are entering the workforce at a time of high unemployment.

鈥淧art of the concerted effort here is to find good jobs for 100,000 people,鈥� he says.聽

Neil Campbell, director of innovation for K-12 education policy at the Center for American Progress, says this sort of collaboration 鈥� evidence-backed tutoring plus a jobs initiative for college graduates 鈥� could end up bolstering the school workforce long term. 鈥淚 would hope this would introduce thousands of young people to career opportunities in education,鈥� he says.

There are also benefits for the tutors, says Jim Balfanz, chief executive officer of City Year, a nonprofit that partners with AmeriCorps to bring 3,000 young people into underserved school districts. These primarily 20-somethings, who come from a diversity of economic, religious, and racial backgrounds, quickly learn how to work together, for a cause bigger than themselves. And that, he argues, is profound.

鈥淭he idea of service as a shared experience, where you鈥檙e on a team working side by side with people from very different backgrounds, working for something larger than yourself 鈥� that creates an incredibly powerful developmental moment,鈥� he says.

A national year of service could both close educational achievement gaps and enhance a sense of civic engagement. 鈥淚t shows that being a citizen and being part of democracy is not just about your rights and participation in a political process, but participating as a citizen,鈥� Dr. Balfanz says.

Concerns about scaling up

Dig into the talk about scaling up tutoring, though, and even supporters acknowledge that there is a worrisome background.

鈥淚 can think of very few interventions in the education sector that hold more promise,鈥� says Dr. Kraft of Brown University. 鈥淭hat said, one of the truths of education reform and education research is that taking small-scale, effective programs and expanding them is universally difficult to do and often fails.鈥�

Thinkers on the political right say this is reason to be skeptical about a large federal initiative. In an article for Education Next, Lisa Snell, director of K-12 education policy partnerships at the Charles Koch Institute, supported the idea of ramped-up tutoring in schools, but argued against a top-down tutoring 鈥淢arshall Plan.鈥�

鈥淎 national, centralized tutoring program would create a slow response, where politics and process will stand in the way of students鈥� needs,鈥� she wrote.

Many involved with today鈥檚 tutoring look back with concern at SES, the acronym for supplemental education services, a program that was part of the George W. Bush administration鈥檚 No Child Left Behind law.

Under that initiative, schools that failed to hit mandated achievement targets were required to offer students free tutoring programs. But there were few requirements for the tutoring groups that contracted with school districts.

鈥淓very big company, every mom and pop company, people who had never done tutoring, they all came out of the woodwork,鈥� Dr. Slavin recalls. Almost all offered their services during the summer or after school and struggled to keep students engaged. With profits tied to the number of students enrolled, some offered sign-up incentives like free iPods 鈥� only to see students collect a device and never return.

Few programs produced any meaningful academic gains, Dr. Slavin says. 鈥淭he impact was near zero,鈥� he says.

This is why both the type and the implementation of tutoring are going to be key, supporters say. And it is why David Hersh, the director of Proving Ground, an educational laboratory launched in 2015 that is connected to Harvard University, says that improving academic outcomes is going to have to be about more than just tutoring.聽

鈥淟et鈥檚 say we knew that tutoring was the best hope in the world,鈥� says Dr. Hersh. 鈥淲e鈥檇 still need to get that tutoring model, that effective thing, into the hands of educators who needed it. They would need to identify the students [who would benefit from it]. It would need to be set up well to make sure that it could be implemented the way it was designed. And implementation is a huge, huge challenge in education.鈥�

The focus of Proving Ground is to help with this step. It creates new processes for schools to test and make improvements, right down to the particular message that goes out to parents whose children have missed too many school days. With quick prototyping and adjustment, it distributes lessons learned to key decision-makers and districts, helping schools shift away from the slow, bureaucratic processes that many see as a hindrance to educational reform.

鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to use the lens that the pandemic has created to motivate people to realize that much more fundamental change is required,鈥� says Dr. Hersh.聽

In other words, it鈥檚 not just adding tutors 鈥� it鈥檚 changing the way schools try new things and even how they understand 鈥渁cademic achievement.鈥� Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and executive editor of Education Next, agrees.

鈥淵es, we need high-dosage tutoring, we need more learning time, we need expanded mental health for kids,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut if all schools do is to add those services on what they usually do, and what they usually do is mediocre 鈥� that鈥檚 not going to get us there.鈥�

鈥淭his is an opportunity鈥�

That is exactly how Ang茅lica Infante-Green, Rhode Island鈥檚 commissioner of education, sees it.

鈥淲hat we need to do is to think outside the box,鈥� she says. 鈥淲e鈥檝e always known that there鈥檚 been this dirty little secret in education, that we had these inequalities. COVID pulled it out from under the rug. Now this is an opportunity to reinvent what education can look like.鈥�

In her state, this has taken a number of different forms. Rhode Island ran a summer program for students for the first time in 2020. It opened an All Course Network of virtual and in-person classes to any student in the state. And it partnered with schoolhouse.world to connect Rhode Island students with online tutoring 鈥� and maybe even with Raymond Jiang or one day Carl McGrone, who says he wants to be a tutor himself in the future.

Ms. Infante-Green admits that she was a bit skeptical when she first heard about the online tutoring site, but agreed to have her 13-year-old son try it out.

鈥淗e met a few times a week with a tutor. I was amazed at the progress,鈥� she says.

And that, she says, along with the state鈥檚 relationship with Khan Academy, convinced her that Rhode Island should at least give it a try.聽

鈥淲e have a tendency of doing things in these steps that take a long time,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 part of the educational bureaucracy. COVID has blown that out of the water. We know we need to do things differently.鈥�

Drew Bent, chief operating officer of schoolhouse.world, says that more state partnerships are in the works. Already New Hampshire and Mississippi are actively using schoolhouse.world to get tutoring to its students; soon other education departments across the country will follow suit.

鈥淭utoring fits into everyone鈥檚 model,鈥� Mr. Bent says. 鈥淣o matter what you believe about education, tutoring plays a part.鈥�

This, after all, is how Mr. Khan got involved in education in the first place. Khan Academy grew out of Mr. Khan鈥檚 experience tutoring his cousins while he was still working as a hedge fund analyst.聽

The number of people using Khan Academy鈥檚 online video lessons skyrocketed during the pandemic. And it became clear, Mr. Khan says, that access to real-time learning was missing for a lot of young people.

He decided to test out a platform that would let volunteer tutors offer free small-group tutoring to anyone in the world. Skeptics wondered where the tutors would come from. But that didn鈥檛 end up being a problem 鈥� they had a flood of people going through the schoolhouse.world certification process to teach, from retired physics professors to 鈥渞eally incredible 14-year-olds,鈥� Mr. Khan says.

It turned out that many people enjoy teaching 鈥� people, he says, 鈥渨ho would have loved to go into teaching but got sucked into finance or technology or law.鈥�

As schoolhouse.world expanded, it started building partnerships with urban school districts and charter school networks. The idea, Mr. Bent says, was that teachers whose students needed extra help could put in a request for tutoring, and within days, dozens of high-qualified tutors would be ready to log on and help.

鈥淭he tutors love this,鈥� Mr. Khan says. 鈥淲hen they see, here鈥檚 an urban school district that needs our help, these software engineers and professors in England, they say, 鈥業 want to do that.鈥欌��

Meanwhile, for the students, 鈥測ou鈥檙e sitting in Long Beach, or some inner city, and your tutor is in upstate New York? Where鈥檚 that? Or they鈥檙e in England? Cool. There鈥檚 just something fun about that.鈥�

Schoolhouse.world is geared for students age 13 and up. Younger students, education experts say, often do better person to person.

But that鈥檚 why educational leaders such as AJ Gutierrez, co-founder of Saga Education, the tutoring nonprofit that saw tremendous success is Chicago Public Schools, see benefit in a diverse system of high-quality tutoring innovations. 鈥淎s we think about tutoring, it鈥檚 not just about accelerating academic performance,鈥� he says. 鈥淎s a district, there is a lot of benefit from infusing schools and communities with human capital.鈥�

Bringing hundreds of thousands of young people into schools, expanding learning communities to include professionals across the world, re-imagining the schoolhouse walls and even incorporating new technology, such as adaptive learning and artificial intelligence, into the tutoring process has the chance to fundamentally transform education, he says.

鈥淭he work that we have ahead of us is really figuring out how to incorporate this not as an add-on, but part and parcel of how education is delivered in the United States,鈥� says Dr. Bhatt, the University of Chicago researcher.

Dr. Slavin agrees. 鈥淲hen everybody comes back to school ... there will be a sense of exhilaration, a 鈥榣et鈥檚 get back to normal, let鈥檚 get back to what we used to do,鈥欌�� he says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not going to do it. There have to be ways of using this tragedy to create something better than what would have happened without it.鈥� 聽

This story was supported by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reporting about responses to social problems.聽