There is a temptation in education to abandon projects rapidly and instead chase a new solution as a magic bullet for improving student outcomes. Too often, when an investment doesn’t have an instant payoff, it’s abandoned for the next shiny thing. New programs, new technology, new slogans, each promising to fix what came before it. But the truth is, no new solution will ever pay off without doing the hard, steady work of diagnosing problems and mastering the fundamentals.

In the post-COVID era, tutoring has faced criticism for mixed results following significant investments to address learning loss. This comes despite a significant body of research that shows high-dosage tutoring yields, on average, a learning gain of one-third of a grade level per year, with the potential for a full extra year of learning over three years.

So, what gives?

Programs falter when implementation becomes an afterthought. Between 2022 and 2024, school systems invested billions of dollars in high-dosage tutoring to address COVID-era learning loss. But states and districts often lacked the data infrastructure to track participation and measure student learning impacts, and the federal framework in which they were operating asked for little accountability. This left many states floundering, rapidly trying to deliver services to students without adequate systems to track and manage their data.

Imagine being given eggs, flour and sugar and told to bake a cake, with no measurements and no recipe. Obviously, no matter how talented the baker, the results will be haphazard.

On the other hand, when educators and schools are given the proper tools to implement, measure and scale proven interventions, student learning improves.

Christina’s experience as school superintendent in Washington, D.C. shows what can happen when clear recipes, accurate measurements and the right ingredients are built in from the start.

Read the full article about tutoring at The 74 Million.