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Dear Colleagues,

How often does it happen that a national policy priority, robust research, and the aspirations of classroom teachers converge? On an issue with bipartisan support, no less? Not very often.

But tutoring is an exception. As many as 80 percent of school districts and charter school organizations have launched tutoring programs to help students rebound from the pandemic.

The challenge now is to scale tutoring that research says gets the best results―programs with four or fewer students working with the same tutor for at least 30 minutes during the school day, three times a week for at least several months―and sustain it beyond the fast-approaching expiration of schools’ federal pandemic-relief funding.

[link removed] latest report, Learning Curve: Lessons from the Tutoring Revolution in Public Education ([link removed]) , profiles three very different ways to do that. Researched and written by FutureEd Policy Director Liz Cohen under our partnership with Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator, we tell the tutoring stories of schools in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Odessa, Texas; and New York City―part of an analysis of the evolving tutoring landscape that also draws on dozens of interviews with tutoring providers, researchers, and school and school district leaders, teachers, and students elsewhere in the country.
Read the Report ([link removed])
AI in Education
Right before the holidays, we released Senior Fellow Alina Tugend's analysis ([link removed]) of the potential of artificial intelligence to reshape the nation’s classrooms. Richard Culatta, chief executive of the International Society for Technology in Education, praised Tugend’s piece as arguably “the most useful snapshot of AI in education” he’s read.

Testimony
As part of our work in the District of Columbia, Liz Cohen shared ([link removed]) insights into the sources of chronic student absenteeism and strategies for addressing the problem in testimony before both the D.C. City Council and the State Board of Education. I discussed ([link removed]) ways to strengthen teacher retention with the City Council in a hearing on that important topic.

State of the States
To gauge where education policy (and politics) is headed in 2024, FutureEd is compiling governors’ State-of-the-State addresses ([link removed]) . Some governors are making big plans: from $2 billion for school construction in Idaho, to school-based health centers in New York State, merit pay for Iowa’s teachers, and an AI moonshot in New Jersey.

We continue to track state spending ([link removed]) of education-related federal pandemic-relief funding.

And we’re posting statewide chronic absenteeism data ([link removed]) for the 2022-23 school year—the most recent complete academic year—as states release it.

Dual-enrollment Success Story
While in Baton Rouge, Cohen wrote about GEO Next Generation High School, a charter school that partners with Baton Rouge Community College to offer a robust dual-enrollment program ([link removed]) . As of last fall, half of GEO’s 455 mostly low-income students were taking college courses. Though the program is tuition-free to students, GEO covers its costs with state and local per-pupil funding, because more students enrolled in community college classes means fewer sections of high school classes, allowing the school to reduce its staffing.

People
We’re delighted to announce that the University of Chicago’s Elaine Allensworth, the director of the Consortium for Chicago School Research, has joined our research advisory board. FutureEd Editorial Director Maureen Kelleher recently spoke with ([link removed]) Allensworth about whether high school grades or standardized admission test scores are better predictors of college success—a much-debated topic lately.
Watch the Video ([link removed])
We continue to track leadership moves in the education sector in The Churn ([link removed]) , and to provide a listing of upcoming in-person and virtual education events ([link removed]) . Send your leadership news and events to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) , and we’ll be happy to post them.

Best wishes for 2024.

Tom

Thomas Toch
Director, FutureEd
McCourt School of Public Policy
Georgetown University
[email protected]
@thomas_toch
| @futureedgu ([link removed]) | www.future-ed.org ([link removed])

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