Check out this article about Massachusetts’ most recent investment in early literacy high-dosage tutoring through Ignite

Source: The Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Authors: Almudena Abeyta, Tracy Curley, Dianne Kelly, Ed Lambert, & Vanessa Lipschitz

Much commentary has been offered on the literacy crisis plaguing the country. Massachusetts, often recognized as a leader in student achievement, has experienced the same challenge. Signs of the problem were clear in advance of the pandemic with NAEP fourth-grade reading proficiency rates falling from 50 percent to 45 percent between 2011 and 2019. The most recent 2024 NAEP results for fourth-grade reading in Massachusetts show the proficiency rate has fallen to 40 percent. Yet a recent $25 million state investment in early literacy high-dosage tutoring, spearheaded by Governor Healey, presents a new strategy to reverse the trend.

High-dosage tutoring has become a common tool to address literacy gaps across states. Many of these programs have produced smaller outcomes than anticipated, with researchers pointing to issues with planning and logistics that compromised dosage. The work in Massachusetts, however, takes a different approach by focusing on a first-grade literacy safety net in districts with predominantly low-income students. This aligns with the emerging hypothesis that tutoring results might be bolstered by saturating a grade or school.

The high-dosage tutoring safety net was first tested in a two-year, $11 million pilot by the One8 Foundation. In fall 2023, the One8 Foundation funded 13 districts across Massachusetts to partner with Ignite Reading to provide high-dosage, in-school tutoring to first-grade students who did not meet grade-level benchmarks on the district’s state-mandated fall screener. The program paired each student with a trained Ignite Reading tutor who provided them with one-on-one virtual instruction for 15 minutes every day from late September to early June.

Two characteristics differentiated the One8 program. First, for districts to be eligible for the program, they needed to use currently or be in the process of adopting a high-quality English language arts curriculum and have engaged teachers in professional learning to use the curriculum.[i] This meant that by design, Ignite Reading’s science of reading-based tutoring used a similar, structured approach to what students were experiencing with their classroom teachers, avoiding the risk that tutoring become a crutch to prop up outdated or ineffective approaches to literacy instruction. The curriculum requirement also guaranteed that in ensuing years, students would continue to receive ELA instruction grounded in high-quality instructional materials aligned with the science of reading.

Second, the program was fully targeted at first-grade students with literacy gaps. Tutoring is expensive, and resource-constrained districts are often forced into tough choices about which students get seats for what purpose. These choices can create logistical and instructional challenges for classroom teachers that affect dosage, are difficult to integrate into a comprehensive support system, and may not deliver sustained student outcomes. The One8 program placed a major bet on first grade, given the strength of the literacy tutoring efficacy research for that grade. If foundational reading skills are developed in first grade and instruction relies on high-quality ELA curriculum, then a student’s ability to become a capable reader in second grade and beyond is dramatically amplified. The pilot aimed to provide comprehensive coverage for first graders with need, creating a structural intervention or “safety net” first-grade teachers could count on and build around.

Johns Hopkins University evaluated the program results from the 2023–24 school year and found that tutored students grew substantially more (with over five months of instructional gains), as compared to national norms, and significantly more than similar untutored peers in the same district. Gains were consistent across student subgroups and particularly notable among Black students and English learners suggesting the program’s potential to close persistent literacy achievement gaps. The evaluation included surveys and focus groups, with educators frequently noting that the level of personalized instruction and individualized practice provided through high-dosage tutoring simply could not be replicated by school systems.

Based on the strength of these results, the $25 million state investment is designed to scale the first-grade literacy safety net to approximately 10,000 students during the 2025–26 school year. The level of investment is calculated to meet the projected need among first-grade students in districts with predominantly low-income students that are using a high-quality core curriculum. If successful, this statewide program moves toward creating a systematic, high-impact intervention for students with literacy gaps, deploying resources early and efficiently to catch them up so they can be on pace to become fluent readers in second grade. This first-grade safety net also offers an opportunity to streamline program operations, anchor on real time data to more closely monitor student progress, and provide critical support for educators so they can effectively teach across a wide range of student needs.

Moving forward, we can foresee updates to the design of school-level multi-tiered systems of support in later grades as the number of students requiring support declines and the size of learning gaps shrinks. Districts in the One8 pilot described seeing the highest rates of literacy proficiency they had ever experienced after the pilot, with fewer students requiring additional support in later grades and updates in the design of their special education referral processes. If we maintain the impact shown in the pilot, we foresee an opportunity to update the design of supports in later grades to make them more targeted, concentrated and effective.

Studies have shown the promise of high-dosage tutoring as a response to the national literacy crisis. Yet it is an expensive intervention that often is hard for schools to effectively incorporate into their existing systems of support. The new Massachusetts program offers an interesting roadmap for how we might use tutoring as a consistent and sustainable tool that teachers, students, and families can count on to help all students become capable readers.

[i] High quality ELA curricula were defined as those receiving green ratings for Gateway 1 and 2 on EdReports, those endorsed by the Knowledge Matters Campaign, or those with ratings of at least Partially Meets Expectations on all CURATE ratings. If the core curriculum did not include foundational skills, the district or local education agency needed to also be using a high-quality foundational skills supplemental program.