The tutor is virtual -- the learning is real

Kids spend too much time on screens at home and at school, nearly everyone agrees. Edtech has lost its luster. Yet it's hard to give up on the dream that technology can improve learning. High-intensity tutoring -- three to five times a week for no more than four students -- can improve math and reading skills, research has found. But schools struggle to recruit and train enough in-person tutors.

Virtual tutoring -- human tutors on screen -- can work as well as face-to-face tutoring, writes Linda Jacobson. In a Massachusetts study, first-graders who spent 15 minutes a day with an online Ignite Reading tutor gained an extra five months of learning, according to data shared with The 74, she writes. That's an enormous gain. Furthermore, 85 percent of students who reached grade level by the end of first grade were reading at grade level a year later, without extra help.

“Virtual models are getting stronger,” said Amanda Neitzel, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University who conducted the Ignite research.

In another study, she looked elementary school students in Texas and Louisiana who received virtual tutoring from Air Reading. They gained nearly three additional months of learning, outperforming their classmates.

Another virtual program, Hoot Reading, helped students in first through fourth grade in the Kansas City, Missouri, schools, new data shows. Students met with online tutors for 30-minute sessions at least three times a week for 20 weeks. The more sessions they completed, the better students did.

Don't wait to remediate, writes Sarah D. Sparks in Education Week. After daily sessions of Ignite Reading helped second- and third-graders improve their reading skills significantly, a Georgia district decided to focus on kindergarten and first grade. The district hopes to get nearly all students reading on grade level by the end of first grade.

Effective tutoring programs provide frequent sessions and a sequenced curriculum, says researcher Amanda Neitzel of Johns Hopkins. It's not cheap.

"High-intensity in-person tutoring programs typically cost $1,000 to $3,000 per student, with some programs topping $4,000 per student," reports Sparks. Ignite Reading averages $2,500 per student.

That may be too expensive for districts with high concentrations of students who are way behind in reading, warns Neitzel. Her research shows it's much harder to help students who remain behind at the end of first grade. “We need to take a hard look at what’s happening in the classroom. Systemically, what do we need to do so that those teachers can get most of those kids reading? . . . We’re not going to tutor our way out of this."

Tutoring programs -- especially those conducted online -- often fail because student attendance is erratic, writes Greg Toppo on The 74. In the Massachusetts pilot, Ignite Reading hired staffers to get students to show up for nearly every session. If schools don't make time during the school day for tutoring, students don't get enough help to make a difference.