University-Led High Impact Tutoring for Low-Achieving High School Students: A Three-Year Randomized Controlled Trial

• In Event: Promising Findings From the Evaluation of Tutoring and Educational Interventions Through the COVID Pandemic Recovery.

Abstract

High impact tutoring is a promising academic intervention, but few studies exist at the high school level. The purpose of this three-year randomized controlled trial is to examine the effects of high impact tutoring on ninth-grade mathematics achievement at seven schools. In the treatment group, students received high impact tutoring (i.e., groups of 2:1 or 3:1) three times a week for an entire academic year while students in the control group attended a remediation mathematics course. The treatment group gained approximately a half-year of additional learning when compared to the control group although both groups made considerable gains. Results also indicated that student-tutor ratios can be expanded from 2:1 to 3:1 with no detrimental effects on academic performance.

Authors

• Daniel Hamlin, University of Oklahoma

• Stacy Reeder, University of Oklahoma

• Corey Peltier, University of Oklahoma