What works: 'Science of reading,' high-quality curricula, tutoring

What can schools do to improve student achievement? Reading and math scores have slumped in the last decade, report Sarah Mervosh, Francesca Paris and Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times. They asked 37 academics and researchers to analyze turnaround ideas for effectiveness and cost.

Photo: Mikhail Nilov/Pexels

Some interventions were rated as effective, but expensive, such as small-group tutoring, high-quality preschool and paying effective teachers more to work at high-poverty schools.

Adopting the "science of reading," a "systematic approach to teaching reading that puts a focus on phonics and other evidence-based practices," was rated as cost effective, along with using "research-backed, high-quality curriculums, vetted by a state or school district (as opposed to having individual schools or teachers select their own materials)."

"School accountability — giving schools a rating, like an A-F letter grade, and requiring underperforming schools to make changes — emerged as highly cost effective," they write. It relies on standardized testing, which is unpopular with many teachers and parents.

Offering more access to advanced classes, such as eighth-grade algebra or Advanced Placement classes in high school, also was rated as cost effective. Experts want students to be selected based on test scores, not teacher recommendations, to avoid bias. (I wonder whether high-poverty schools can prepare more students to succeed in real algebra or AP classes. Again, can they pass a test not written or scored by the teacher?)

Firing teachers for underperformance also made the cost-effective list -- but, politically, it's very costly.

"Some politically popular ideas — on both the left and the right — ranked as both costly and less effective, at least when it came to improving student achievement," Mervosh, Paris and Miller write. These include private-school vouchers, which tend to help students already in private schools, and mandating smaller class sizes, which often requires hiring less-qualified teachers. Also on the list were increasing pay for all teachers and funding mental-health services.

Some ideas may not raise achievement, but don't cost much, the experts said. "Limiting screen time in school; restricting A.I. in the classroom, especially for younger students; and banning cellphones" are worth a try, they thought.

The experts proposed some ideas not on the Times' list, including "allowing high-performing charter schools to expand and limiting children’s social media and tech usage outside of school."

Of course, states that have improved student achievement, such as Mississippi and Louisiana, have implemented multiple strategies, not just one. They've benefited from strong leadership and a willingness to stay the course.

Good ideas done badly don't work, the experts said. “Implementation is everything," said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

"High-quality pre-K is highly cost effective,” while “low-quality pre-K is basically subsidized day care,” said Lori Taylor, a Texas A&M professor.

Reformers need to focus more on feasibility, writes Matthew Kraft, a Brown education professor and one of the experts surveyed. Yes, an intervention worked under ideal conditions, but will it work in other settings?

"Some promising interventions such as investing in modern HVAC systems, which I wish had made the cut for the survey, are VERY easy to implement with fidelity," Kraft writes. They "require very little human behavioral change." But "other promising interventions, like tutoring, are much harder to scale because they require hiring or training personnel, organizational change, and difficult resource tradeoffs."

Intensive tutoring hasn't been a game changer because many students don't get very much of it, notes Chalkbeat's Matt Barnum. In trying to scale up tutoring to counter pandemic learning loss, schools compromised on quality. That didn't work well.