California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s revised state budget proposal for 2021-22 includes one-time funds of $2.6 billion to schools to provide interventions for students, including tutoring. While tutoring can make a difference, we must avoid the pitfalls of pre-packaged and episodic interventions. We must get this one right.

School districts should prioritize funding for tutoring for students who have fallen the furthest behind in their studies and whose families are the most disenfranchised economically. Experts who have studied learning loss during the pandemic estimate that students on average likely will have lost five to nine months of learning by the end of the school year.

Students of color, who lacked quality academic opportunities and supports before the pandemic, likely will have suffered at least two to four months more of learning loss than white students. The education disparities students of color typically experience likely will grow if left unaddressed.

A well-designed tutoring program can help reverse this loss. Just as state and local leaders need to address digital inequities in low-income neighborhoods, tutoring is critical for struggling students.

Newsom’s revised 2021-22 budget proposal also includes funding to provide opportunities to pay college students to tutor in their communities. Others also have suggested partnerships between colleges and school districts where college students can earn credit for tutoring K-12 students. Nationally, education leaders such as former Education Secretary John King Jr. and researchers have called for a national tutoring corps to recruit college students and recent college graduates to serve as tutors. Such initiatives and the positive role modeling underlining them may be especially beneficial to K-12 students who will be the first in their family to attend college.

Read the full article about tutoring after the pandemic by Monique Corral at EdSource.