Tutoring Nears Research Benchmark After ESSER, but Averages Hide Big Differences Among Students, Analysis of Nearly 900,000 Sessions Finds

As tutoring became a mainstay of K-12 education, the median student across state-, district- and vendor-led programs received about 72 minutes a week, with 91% of the variation in weekly minutes among students in the same program.

RICHMOND, Va., Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Pearl Education, the trusted technology infrastructure behind many of the nation's most effective tutoring initiatives, today released The State of Tutoring 2026: What Leaders Can See and What They Can't, the second annual report on the state of K-12 tutoring. Drawing on interviews with state and district leaders and an analysis of 883,882 tutoring sessions delivered to 64,044 students across 28 programs, the report provides a rare analysis of K-12 tutoring that looks past program-level data to what students actually received. That lens reveals what the report calls a "visibility gap": the disconnect between what program averages show and what individual students actually experience.

In a post-ESSER funding landscape and amidst tightening budgets, tutoring programs delivered close to the level of support that research associates with best-in-class tutoring. Research on effective high-dosage tutoring sets a standard of roughly 90 minutes of tutoring a week, delivered in three small group 30-minute sessions, and the typical student in the analysis received about 72 minutes a week. However, when looking across the dataset, 91% of the difference in weekly minutes was among students in the same program, rather than between programs. Understanding what individual students actually receive, which students may need more support, and where leaders can adjust is what allows programs to keep improving.

The report features a foreword by Amanda Neitzel, PhD, associate research professor and deputy director of evidence research at the Center for Research and Reform in Education, who has researched tutoring programs across the country. "The pattern I see most often isn't that programs are failing," Neitzel writes in her foreword. "It's that the people responsible can't see whether the programs are failing or not."

"The field has spent years asking whether tutoring works. The more useful question now is whether anyone can see what students are actually receiving, while there's still time to act on it," said John Failla, CEO of Pearl. "Even as budgets tighten, programs are getting close to what research says works best. The opportunity now is to build the evidence on which models can be most effective within the confines of a school day."

Key Insights from the Report

• Variation inside programs: In one district serving just over 6,000 students, some students received 23 minutes of tutoring a week and others received 96, reflecting the within-program variation seen across the dataset.
  
  
• Program design: One vendor-led program delivers about three 20-minute online sessions a week in groups of about three, for roughly 64 minutes a week. A district program delivers two 30-minute in-person sessions a week in groups of about six, for roughly 60 minutes. As the report notes, "on the measure most systems collect, these two programs are identical."
  
  
• Duration: The median student was tutored for 12 weeks, and nearly 1 in 4 for fewer than eight. Only 10% received three or more sessions a week sustained for 12 weeks or longer.
  
  
• Attendance: Students showed up consistently, attending 83% of scheduled sessions, and 89% in one-to-one programs.
  
  
• Tutor continuity: In district-run programs, 84% of students worked with the same tutor all year, compared with roughly 4 in 10 in state-run and vendor-run programs.

Like the 2025 State of Tutoring report, this year's report also profiles states and districts, including Arkansas, Massachusetts and Metro Nashville Public Schools, that are building the systems that make this visibility possible and using it to strengthen their tutoring programs.

Taken together, the findings point to a field on solid footing, and the opportunity now is to close the visibility gap and build the evidence infrastructure that helps the field continuously improve. Once leaders can see what students actually received, they can improve delivery and connect those differences to outcomes. Over time, that evidence can show what works, for whom and under what conditions, including which tutoring models can be effective within the realities of the school day.

The State of Tutoring 2026: What Leaders Can See and What They Can't was developed by Whiteboard Advisors in partnership with Pearl. The report draws on qualitative and quantitative insights collected in 2026, including interviews with state education officials, district leaders and researchers, alongside an analysis of 883,882 completed sessions delivered to 64,044 students across 16 vendor-led, 6 state-led and 6 district-led programs during the 2025-26 school year. The dataset is one of the largest cross-state collections of tutoring implementation data assembled to date. It is drawn from programs using a single platform in a specific set of states and districts and is not a nationally representative sample.

Read the full report here.

About Pearl

Pearl Education works with states and school districts to design, manage, and sustain student support programs at scale, including tutoring, intervention, and supplemental instruction.

The U.S.-based education technology company serves as the trusted infrastructure behind many of the nation's largest student support initiatives. Through its Student Support Platform, Pearl helps education leaders coordinate program delivery, measure participation and outcomes, and gain clearer insight into what's working for students. By streamlining scheduling and attendance, while centralizing and standardizing program data across schools, programs, and providers, Pearl helps districts and states strengthen implementation, support accountability, and inform funding decisions.

Trusted by schools and states nationwide, Pearl has supported close to 1,000 school districts and has powered more than 130 million minutes of student learning. Recognized by TIME as one of the Top EdTech Companies of 2025, Pearl partners with many of the nation's largest student support initiatives to help districts deliver effective, equitable, and sustainable programs.

Learn more at www.poweredbypearl.com

SOURCE Pearl Education