It hasn’t gained any political traction, but education researchers have been advocating for a national tutoring program to support students who may be harmed by school closures.

I’d certainly be supportive of it and, perhaps, if Joe Biden wins the Presidency and the Democrats win the Senate, it might have a chance of becoming a reality.

The 74 just published Using Tutors to Combat COVID Learning Loss: New Research Shows That Even Lightly Trained Volunteers Drive Academic Gains that supports that idea.

In the near-term, however, I like what our school is doing to promote equity – and has done for years: offer the opportunity for advanced students and proficient English Language Learners who are seniors to tutor our Beginning and Intermediate ELLs.

It’s a win-win situation – plenty of research documents how both tutor and tutees benefit (you can see more at The Best Posts On Helping Students Teach Their Classmates — Help Me Find More and The Best Resources On The Value & Practice Of Having Older Students Mentoring Younger Ones ).

And students love it!

They have been a Godsend during virtual teaching, that’s for sure!

The research cited in The 74 certainly supports the value of this kind of effort.  I was also struck by something else discussed in the article – the importance of keeping the numbers a tutor works with to possible three-or-four or less.

That makes a lot of sense to me, and it’s the number we’ve been using for years.

I wonder how many other schools operate this kind of program?