Kim Dadisman, associate director of policy at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) North America and Laina Sonterblum, senior policy associate at J-PAL North America, explore how tutoring programmes can be an effective tool in combatting learning loss and supplementing curriculums in schools in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States, the Biden administration has publicly called on districts to spend COVID-relief dollars on tutoring. In the United Kingdom, the Department for Education launched the national tutoring programme. These initiatives are excellent steps toward learning recovery, but could fall short of their potential if implementation strays too far from the evidence. Evidence from rigorous evaluations of nearly 100 tutoring programmes demonstrated that tutoring consistently had large, positive impacts on student learning. That said, not all programmes are equally effective.
