research and expertise
high-impact tutoring research
We invented high-impact tutoring as a core component of a school day, so that students can go deeper, teachers can move faster, and families can dream bigger. Several rigorous high-impact tutoring research evaluations found that students who received individualized math tutoring through Saga scored higher on exams, earned better grades, and were more likely to pass high school classes.
Saga meets national Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) evidenced-based standards and is approved for Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) or other Federal (Title) funds.
Realizing the Promise of High Dosage Tutoring at Scale: Preliminary Evidence for the Field
This technical report from the University of Chicago Education Lab and MDRC outlines preliminary results from the Personalized Learning Initiative showing that high dosage tutoring can be scaled and can work – even when delivered in the aftermath of the pandemic and in diverse academic settings.
Accelerate Learning Now: Strategies for Sustaining High-Impact Tutoring Post-ESSER
This white paper provides a series of strategies for helping students recover from learning interruptions by sustaining high-impact tutoring programs after federal COVID-19 emergency funding expires later this year.
Leveraging the Federal Work-Study Program for P-12 Tutoring
This white paper examines Federal Work-Study (FWS) as a funding source for placing college students in P—12 student support roles such as tutoring, coaching, and mentoring as outlined by the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS).
New Research Shows High Dosage Tutoring is Highly Effective
The Education Lab conducted a study that demonstrates individualized, intensive (or “high-dosage”) tutoring can double or triple the amount of math high school students learn each year, increase student grades, and reduce math and non-math course failures.
The Impressive Effects of Tutoring: A systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Tutoring—defined here as one-on-one or small-group instructional programming by teachers, paraprofessionals, volunteers, or parents—is one of the most versatile and potentially transformative educational tools in use today. Within the past decade, dozens of preK-12 tutoring experiments have been conducted, varying widely in their approach, context, and cost. Our study represents the first systematic review and meta-analysis of these and earlier studies. We develop a framework for considering different types of programs to not only examine overall effects, but also explore how these effects vary by program characteristics and intervention context. We find that tutoring programs yield consistent and substantial positive impacts on learning outcomes, with an overall pooled effect size estimate of 0.37 SD. The following working paper was developed by researchers at the Adul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab North America, based out of MIT. Saga Education is one of the primary organizations highlighted throughout the report.
The Economics of Scale-Up
Most randomized controlled trials (RCT) of social programs test interventions at modest scale. While the hope is that promising programs will be scaled up, we have few successful examples of this scale-up process in practice.