COVID Relief Funds are Gone, But More States Commit to High-Impact Tutoring

In late 2024, Susanna Loeb, one of the nation’s leading researchers on tutoring, had doubts about the future of a field she’s worked hard to advance. 

Over $120 billion in federal COVID relief funds were expiring, leaving school leaders and tutoring providers uncertain whether programs would continue. The incoming administration was focused on slashing Department of Education spending, not issuing new grants. 

“We didn’t know if this administration would put anything into education,” said Loeb, a Stanford University professor who studies tutoring programs. “We were worried that all of the experimentation that had been going on and that access to tutoring would drop precipitously.” 

That didn’t happen.

When researchers, district leaders and tutoring providers convened earlier this month in Washington, it was clear that worries over tutoring being nothing more than a pandemic fad had turned to optimism. A growing number of states expect districts to integrate tutoring into the school day and have committed funding and staff to make it happen. Several require tutoring for students scoring below grade level and are vetting providers so districts don’t have to. And in a recent round of literacy research grants, totaling $256 million, federal education officials signaled that access to tutoring should be a fixture in the nation’s schools. 

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“High-dosage tutoring has evolved from a concept into a proven, evidence-based strategy and then into a reality for thousands of students in thousands of schools,” Kirsten Baesler, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, told attendees at the annual Accelerate conference. “It is a foundational strategy for improving student outcomes.” 

Even before the new federal grants were announced, a 2025 scan by Loeb’s team showed that nearly half of all states either offer tutoring grants or use their school finance formula to help districts pay for programs. 

Arkansas, which she described as “strategic and ambitious,” is one example. Its 2023 LEARNS Act created two tutoring programs.

One provides grants to districts and charter schools. To measure the return on investment, the state’s student information system now flags whether a student receives tutoring during the school day.

“If policymakers want results, they have to invest in the structures to get those results,” Amy Counts, director of curriculum projects at the state education agency, said during one of the Accelerate sessions. 

Another Arkansas initiative offers parents up to $1,500 to spend on tutoring if their children don’t meet reading standards. Initially, teachers weren’t fond of the idea that families received the extra money instead of schools.

“They didn’t push the program because of that. But we said, ‘If you help parents use that program, that benefits you,’ ” Counts said. The other challenge, she said. was that some parents of struggling readers wouldn’t spend the money “because they’ve never had to engage in securing services for their child.”

To Accelerate President Nakia Towns, the federal grants represent an important shift. 

“Look Mama, we made it,” she told attendees.

Accelerate received one of those 24 grants to work with the Oklahoma State Department of Education. They’ll test how factors like group size, the frequency of sessions and whether tutoring is delivered virtually or in person affects results. 

Seven of the awards went directly to state education agencies that are working to scale up tutoring programs, especially in rural areas. Loeb’s team, for example, will evaluate Arkansas’ efforts to expand AirReading, a virtual program. The study will also compare results when tutors are college students versus trained educators.

‘Important step forward’

Accelerate has launched some of that state-level activity through its grant program, and this legislative session, CEO Kevin Huffman is tracking 12 tutoring-related bills in eight states. They include:

• A New Mexico Senate bill that would require high-impact tutoring for students with a reading or math “deficiency.”

• A New Jersey proposal to establish a competitive grant program for tutoring.

• An Ohio bill that would require free tutoring for students scoring at the lowest levels in math and reading. The Senate passed the bill, but it’s still pending before a House education committee.

• A Louisiana plan that would expand an existing program for elementary students through eighth grade.

“All of this feels like an important step forward,” Huffman told The 74. At the conference, he said “momentum is different” because states aren’t supporting tutoring just because they have one-time federal dollars to spend.

One policy expert recently questioned whether tutoring has produced “too little bang for too much buck.” In a commentary, Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said he hasn’t been able to “muster much enthusiasm” for tutoring and suggested that it has been an insufficient way to address the “disastrous aftermath of COVID-era school closures.”

Loeb agreed that while pandemic relief funds allowed states and districts to test different models, those early examples didn’t always produce gains. Some states and districts moved too fast, and implementation challenges, like infrequent sessions and high turnover of tutors, hindered students’ progress. Research shows that a mismatch between the material tutors cover and the curriculum in students’ regular classes can also contribute to poor results.

“Some of it worked, and some of it didn’t,” Loeb said. 

But during this month’s event, Antoinette Mitchell, state superintendent for the District of Columbia, said investments in tutoring have paid off. Her office, which oversees both the District of Columbia Public Schools and charters, contracts with CitySchools Collaborative, a nonprofit, to manage tutoring logistics. It handles scheduling and finds space for tutoring sessions so principals don’t have to. 

In 2025, more than 42% of DCPS students scored at the highest levels in reading, exceeding pre-pandemic results. In math, the percentage of students meeting expectations grew by over 4 percentage points, the largest jump since 2015. With one of the federal grants, CitySchools Collaborative will expand its work into Maryland and Virginia. 

More recent research findings, about the importance of offering tutoring during the school day and minimizing disruptions, have also allowed districts to learn from past mistakes. 

“You can actually do this at a decent scale,” Loeb said, “and give students this personalized attention.”