Sometimes students need more time.

In This Lesson

Does tutoring work?

What is the history of tutoring?

What is tracking?

Is tracking of students bad?

How can teachers differentiate instruction?

What is MTSS?

How do gifted programs work?

What is blended learning?

How can schools personalize the way students learn?

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★ Discussion Guide

The education system is generally designed with the optimistic expectation that all kids keep up with the class. But what happens when they don't?

To support a student who needs more help, nothing beats time with a well-prepared tutor one-on-one or in a small group. A qualified tutor can help a student focus on learning exactly what they need to know to catch up, or move ahead.

Tutoring is costly

The operational premise of school is that students can learn together efficiently. One-on-one tutoring (or small-group tutoring) is a powerful way to help a student on a temporary or emergency basis, but it is expensive, and schools don't have unlimited staff. Most of the time, teachers have little choice but to power through the curriculum, explaining subjects as best they can in a way that will work for most kids. Mostly they “aim for the middle” and pull aside kids who need extra help. But there is only a certain amount of time in the day.

School systems in America have periodically invested in wide-scale publicly-funded tutoring. For example, for more than a decade, a provision of America's main federal education law (the No Child Left Behind Act, NCLB - 2002-2015) provided children in some low-performing schools with guaranteed access to free tutoring services at a parent's request. Over time, an increasing number of schools and districts qualified for this service, leading to an uncontrollable boom in business for tutoring services. At its peak, the program diverted billions from public schools to tutoring companies, with results that harmed more than they helped. Tutoring expenses threatened to overwhelm school district budgets. When No Child Left Behind was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the mandate to provide unlimited access to tutoring was summarily abandoned.

Did this experience disprove the value of tutoring? No, but it certainly demonstrated its potential for costliness. Research shifted emphasis to identify the key elements of effective tutoring interventions that could be operated on a budget. Districts shifted to budget-based investments in tutoring, with clearer expectations.

What is high-dosage tutoring?

For years, the impact of tutoring on learning was basically unknown because it can take so many forms. A little bit of random after school help doesn't amount to much — what amount of tutoring is worth studying? Gradually, researchers coalesced on a standard meaning for high-dosage tutoring:

• Small groups or one-on-one
• Consistent tutor-student relationships
• At least 3 sessions weekly
• During the school day
• Tied to curriculum
• Ongoing supervision and data use.

To make this advice more concrete, the National Student Support Accelerator developed a toolkit. As part of the Getting Down to Facts project in 2026 (GDTF III), researchers evaluated many change strategies, including tutoring. Stanford professor Susanna Loeb, who coordinated the effort, emphasized the impact:

Improving the use of time in school

Teachers have to slice their attention to make the best use they can of the time they have with students. Perhaps because the needs of students are so varied and complex, educators need terminology to describe their challenges and strategies. It can involve jargon. Buckle up.

Tracking decisions can be biased

Tracking or grouping: The term tracking (or, more neutrally, grouping) describes the practice of separating students into groups based on what they are ready to learn. This approach assumes - or acknowledges - that not all kids advance through school with comparable skills, knowledge, and speed. Tracking is efficient. It enables groups of strong, motivated students to learn and progress quickly, unencumbered by slower learners. It also allows students who need more time to have it. Large classes can function if students are ready for the material.

A disadvantage of placing kids on tracks is that placement decisions can become permanent. It's easy to down-shift a student to a slower track, but the decision is one-way. Once placed on a slower track, it is fiendishly hard to catch up, especially in math, sciences, and world languages. Another important disadvantage is that placement decisions involve judgment, and judgment can be clouded by bias.

Differentiated instruction: Because tracking decisions are hard to reverse, most teachers avoid grouping students based on ability if they can. It's not easy. Teachers try to differentiate instruction so that students can learn effectively in the same classroom, even if they are learning at different levels. This is a difficult feat even for experienced teachers, in part because it is not always easy to tell which students are "getting it" and which aren't.

To intervene effectively before students fall seriously behind, schools need ways to detect problems and act on them in timely ways. To do this systematically, it helps for teachers to use consistent approaches to teaching and testing.

Jargon related to grouping and supporting students

In the Ed100 blog
Education Jargon

Schools have taken many creative approaches to giving students extra help. As you might expect, this variety has cooked up a glorious alphabet soup of acronyms. As of 2026, the currently ascendent term is Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), but the related term Response to Instruction and Intervention (RtI²) has many adherents. Grouping students is also a common tactic for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), which focus on soft skills of behavior and habits.

Decades ago, California schools used to set aside instructional time specifically for students who were identified as Gifted and Talented (GATE). State programs have been eliminated. If there is a gifted program in your school, it is because your school district committed local funds for it. (See the Ed100 blog for much more about this.)

Using technology to make learning time more effective

If you are motivated to learn about a subject, where do you turn?

Mostly, the answer today starts with technology. Web searches and AI chats can be efficient if you can avoid distraction. Schools have wrestled for decades to balance the use of technologies with the value of human interaction in learning. Technology-based systems can help teachers give students the instruction and practice that they need to understand and master some academic skills. When technology is deeply and intentionally incorporated into the operation of the school day, it's sometimes called blended learning. Rocketship Schools, a charter school network, received a lot of attention as an early pioneer of this approach.

Preston Smith, the co-founder and CEO of Rocketship, explains it this way:

As of this writing in 2026, it is clear that Artificial Intelligence systems will influence the use of time for tutoring in schools. Things are changing too quickly to know which experiments will stick. The human aspects of learning are complex and strongly connected to the mental state of the student. A talented educator can cajole a student to open up and try something hard. Will AI tutors have equivalent cajoling power? We shall see.

The next lesson examines the unequal role of summertime in education.

This lesson was updated in May 2026