About

ProvenTutoring.org came about during the COVID pandemic. We (the late Robert Slavin, Nancy Madden, and our colleagues at Johns Hopkins University) started ProvenTutoring.org out of a concern about the damage being done to students’ education due to COVID school closures. Before the pandemic, we had reviewed research on all types of programs for struggling learners, and knew that tutoring during the school day was by far the most effective solution for students struggling in reading and mathematics (see Neitzel et al., 2021; Pellegrini et al., 2021). We concluded that when students returned from COVID school closures, one-topone and small group tutoring should be core strategies to help struggling students regain their footing and move quickly toward grade level performance.

In order to make this idea a reality, we reached out to colleagues throughout the U.S. who had created, successfully evaluated, and disseminated effective tutoring programs capable of being widely scaled up to serve a significant number of the millions of students in need of tutoring. Our idea was that we needed to work together to champion the entire idea of proven tutoring, and to help each other reach far more schools and students than any of us had reached before, with professional development and other services of uncompromising quality. The organizations supporting these programs were eager to work with us and with each other. Even though in principle we are competitors, all of us share a primary concern with helping struggling  students reach their full potential, as well as a strong belief in the importance of rigorous research as the means to discover and validate programs that work.

Please see our Terms of Use here.

References

Chappell, S., Nunnery, J., Pribesh, S., & Hager, J. (2011). A meta-analysis of Supplemental Education Services (SES) provider effects on student achievement. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 16 (1), 1-23.

Deke, J., Gill, B. Dragoset, L., & Bogen, K. (2014). Effectiveness of supplemental educational services. Journal of Research in Educational Effectiveness, 7, 137-165.

Heinrich, C. J., Meyer, R., H., & Whitten, G. W. (2010). Supplemental Education Services under No Child Left Behind: Who signs up and what do they gain? Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 32, 273-298.

Kidron, Y., & Lindsay, J. (2014). The effects of increased learning time on student academic and nonacademic outcomes: Findings from a meta‑analytic review (REL 2014-015). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Appalachia.

Neitzel, A., Lake, C., Pellegrini, M., & Slavin, R. (2021). A synthesis of quantitative research on programs for struggling readers in elementary schools. Reading Research Quarterly. doi:10.1002/rrq.379

Nickow, A. J., Oreopoulos, P., & Quan, V. (2020). The transformative potential of tutoring for pre-k to 12 learning outcomes: Lessons from randomized evaluations. Boston: Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

Pellegrini, M., Neitzel, A., Lake, C., & Slavin, R. (2021). Effective programs in elementary mathematics: A meta-analysis. AERA Open, 7 (1), 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858420986211

Xie, C., Neitzel, A., Cheung, A., & Slavin, R. E. (2021). The effects of summer programs on K-12 students’ reading and mathematics achievement: A meta-analysis. Manuscript submitted for publication.