Personalized Learning
High-dosage tutoring – defined as tutoring embedded during the school schedule that ensures students work consistently on individualized instructional content with their tutor throughout the school year – is among the most effective and cost-effective learning interventions studied to date. However, schools still face barriers to bringing high-dosage tutoring to all students who could benefit. We work in partnership with school districts to understand whether and how we can scale high-dosage tutoring programs to reach tens of thousands more students without compromising effectiveness.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated long-standing disparities in educational performance and attainment along race and class lines. Without dramatic intervention, we risk permanently reversing decades of steady, incremental progress in improving student outcomes. More importantly, we risk shortchanging students–primarily Black and low-income students–the opportunity to learn for decades to come. Despite the scale and gravity of the challenge, we know that there is an effective solution to address learning loss: high-dosage tutoring. Research by the Education Lab, in partnership with CPS and Saga Education, shows that when done well, this approach can double or even triple the rate of student learning.
The Education Lab, in partnership with MDRC and Saga Education, is helping districts scale and rigorously study high-dosage tutoring supports so that more students might benefit.
Our evaluation of Saga Education found that students who participated in Saga’s high-dosage tutoring program for a single year gained 1-2.5 years of additional learning compared to students who did not.
Personalized Learning Initiative
The Personalized Learning Initiative (PLI) is a moonshot to overcome pandemic learning loss and aims to bring high-dosage tutoring to students nationwide.
Personalized Learning Initiative: Tutor Corps Evaluation
The University of Chicago Education Lab is partnering with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to scale personalized tutoring in the wake of the pandemic.
Coaching with Computer-Assisted Learning (CAL)
The Education Lab partnered with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to pilot the Coaching with CAL program, which offers high-dosage tutoring to students through education technology platforms.
Saga Online
The Education Lab, in partnership with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Saga Education, evaluated a pilot of a fully-remote, high-dosage tutoring math intervention for high school students enrolled in CPS Options schools.
Overcoming Pandemic-Induced Learning Loss
The Education Lab’s faculty co-directors, Dr. Jens Ludwig, professor at the University of Chicago, and Dr. Jon Guryan, professor at Northwestern University, published a paper commissioned by the Aspen Economic Strategy Group for its 2023 policy volume.
Personalized Learning Initiative Research Brief
Overview of the Personalized Learning Initiative, a nationwide R&D initiative to scale the benefits of tutoring.
Not Too Late: Improving Academic Outcomes Among Adolescents
Read our academic paper on the early Saga studies published in the American Economic Review.
Not Too Late: Improving Academic Outcomes Among Adolescents
National Bureau of Economic Research working paper that evaluates the effectiveness of an innovative intervention, focused on personalized, intensive, in-school tutoring, in improving academic outcomes for adolescents who are academically behind in school.
Latest Updates
Help Wanted: Strategies to Recruit a Tutoring Workforce on a Large Scale
MDRC’s Rebecca Davis explores effective strategies for recruiting a tutoring workforce at scale, an essential component of the Personalized Learning Initiative, and advancing educational outcomes through targeted recruitment efforts.
Here’s one roadmap to easing the mental health crisis in teen girls
Education Lab Senior Research Director Monica Bhatt and Youth Guidance Chief Program Officer Nacole Milbrook wrote an op-ed featured in the Chicago Sun-Times on the Working on Womanhood program and their partnership with the city and Chicago Public Schools to systematically provide school-based counseling services to 750 girls.
AbbVie spends $350M to bolster healthcare, education; ‘We look forward to the impact we will make in the decades to come’
Lake County News-Sun’s Steve Sadin highlights AbbVie’s philanthropy including commitments to the University of Chicago Education Lab’s research helping urban youth, “in high schools and beyond.”
