For several years, federal pandemic relief funds helped school districts across the United States significantly expand "high-impact"—often referred to as "high-dosage"—tutoring programs that measurably improved student learning and helped address learning disruptions. Now that the primary source of those federal funds has expired, education leaders nationwide are scrambling to figure out how to keep those successful academic programs afloat without cutting essential features or abandoning them altogether.
Between March 2020 and March 2021, the U.S. Congress allocated nearly $190.5 billion to public education through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund, marking the largest one-time federal investment in K-12 education in American history. This unprecedented influx of capital was designed to help schools reopen safely, address health protocols, and mitigate the profound academic setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding ended in phases between 2022 and 2024, though certain school districts were granted specific extensions to liquidate their remaining balances.
In the wake of the funding cliff, school districts have taken varied paths. Some education systems have been forced to pause or significantly scale back their tutoring initiatives, while others are working urgently to save them by weaving them directly into their core academic systems and standard operating budgets. A 2026 analysis of 35 school districts conducted by the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) revealed that eight districts had significantly reduced their tutoring programs and another eight had experienced a distinct pause or operational disruption following the expiration of ESSER. However, the study also found that 19 districts—representing more than half of those examined—successfully preserved or even expanded their tutoring programs despite the financial headwinds.
Extensive educational research has consistently shown that high-impact tutoring is among the most powerful interventions available to make up for pandemic-related learning loss. Typically structured to occur at least three times a week, high-dosage tutoring provides targeted, individualized or small-group instruction in close coordination with regular classroom work. According to the NSSA, programs that feature frequent sessions over a duration of at least 10 weeks, delivered individually or in small groups with data-driven instruction, can generate anywhere from three to 15 months of additional academic learning for participating students.
Despite these proven benefits, maintaining such intensive programs presents a steep financial hurdle. Research from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University indicates that high-impact tutoring costs an estimated $1,200 to $2,500 per student annually. Without the cushion of ESSER funds, absorbing these recurring expenses has proven exceptionally difficult for many local education agencies operating on tight regional budgets.
For schools that heavily invested in these initiatives and are fighting to retain their hard-won academic gains, the central challenge is transforming temporary interventions into permanent fixtures of the school day. Devon Wible, vice president of teaching and learning at Catapult Learning, an organization that provides tutoring services to schools, notes that districts across multiple states are increasingly viewing tutoring not as an optional add-on, but as a foundational layer of daily academic support.
"A few years ago, when ESSER funds were here, the conversation was, ‘Let’s see if it works,’" Wible observes. "Now it’s, ‘How do we sustain this?’"
Building Tutoring Into Existing Systems
One of the primary strategies districts are utilizing to make tutoring sustainable is embedding it directly into the regular school day and aligning it with existing academic-support frameworks. While this integration does not entirely eliminate the cost of providing tutoring, it is considerably less expensive than establishing a separate, standalone extracurricular program that requires additional transportation, staffing, and facility management outside of regular hours.
Wible explains that some school districts have chosen to add dedicated intervention periods or "WIN" (What I Need) blocks directly into their master schedules. These designated times give students access to vital extra support without pulling them away from core classroom instruction. Furthermore, this integrated approach fosters tighter collaboration among classroom teachers, specialized tutors, and intervention staff, who can regularly share student data and work collaboratively toward common academic goals.
The tutoring itself is carefully designed to reinforce and align with classroom instruction. For instance, a student who is struggling with grade-level reading might receive targeted coaching on foundational phonics or decoding skills while continuing to engage with age-appropriate literary texts alongside their peers during regular class time. Schools rely on ongoing student assessment data to identify specific academic needs, adjust instructional approaches, and determine precisely when a student has mastered the material and is ready to exit the program.
"Ultimately, our shared goal is that students experience classroom instruction, intervention and tutoring as one coherent learning experience," Wible says.
Wible has witnessed the tangible impact of this embedded approach through practical implementation. A Catapult analysis encompassing approximately 700 students in kindergarten through third grade across 12 different Massachusetts school districts found that participants made substantial literacy gains after receiving high-impact tutoring, with some students achieving up to five additional months of reading progress. In one particular Massachusetts district, the results were especially striking: after just 12 weeks of targeted tutoring, the proportion of kindergarten and first-grade students performing at or above grade level jumped dramatically from 11% to 55%, according to Wible.
Protecting What Works
Even as districts experiment with creative structural solutions, education policy experts warn that financial pressures could quietly undermine the effectiveness of these programs. David Blazar, an associate professor of education policy at the University of Maryland, suggests that the deeper concern may not be whether tutoring survives in name, but what happens to program quality when schools cannot secure alternative funding and are forced to cut spending.
Blazar recently co-authored a University of Maryland study examining tutoring programs across all 24 of Maryland’s school districts to understand how local education leaders were designing and scaling their academic supports. The analysis revealed that 18 districts offered tutoring featuring several key components associated with stronger student outcomes, such as small-group instruction, frequent weekly sessions, and delivery during normal school hours.
While the study concentrated on Maryland, Blazar believes it provides valuable insight into the broader national dilemma facing districts as they attempt to sustain tutoring in a post-ESSER landscape. As budgets tighten, Blazar expects districts to consider cost-cutting measures such as increasing group sizes, reducing session frequencies, or contracting with lower-cost, less rigorous providers rather than completely eliminating tutoring from their offerings.
"The more likely change is quieter and, in some ways, more consequential: erosion of the design features that make tutoring work," Blazar cautions. "When you have to find savings, dosage — and other components of quality, including how many students work with the same tutor simultaneously — are very likely to change."
However, Blazar’s analysis of implementation plans under the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future from 2024 to 2027 also showed that Maryland districts planned to strategically restructure their daily schedules to keep tutoring operational. Because tutoring serves as a core statutory mandate of the state’s landmark education reform policy, he anticipates that Maryland districts will maintain a strong institutional commitment to the strategy.
"I think they will continue because it is a core part of the Blueprint, and there is growing consensus that tutoring is a critical resource for improving student outcomes, so it is money well spent," Blazar notes. For districts everywhere struggling to stretch limited public dollars, the ultimate challenge remains figuring out how to trim overhead without compromising the essential design elements that make high-impact tutoring effective in the first place.
One District’s Approach
West Feliciana Parish Schools in Louisiana offers a clear illustration of a local school system successfully identifying alternative funding sources to permanently weave high-dosage tutoring into the fabric of the school day. While the district already had basic intervention and tutoring practices in place prior to 2024, it dramatically expanded and formalized its school-day high-dosage tutoring program during the 2024-25 school year by leveraging state funding made available through the Louisiana Department of Education’s Accelerate: High-Dosage Tutoring initiative.
To accommodate the program, the district engineered a schoolwide master schedule incorporating a daily 30- to 50-minute block during which core instruction pauses. Within this window, students are organized into skill-based groups and report either to their regular classroom teacher or a specialized interventionist for targeted instruction, according to Jodi Lemoine, director of accountability at West Feliciana Parish Schools. Students who are not receiving tutoring during that time remain in the classroom to work independently on educational software or read library books, while fourth and fifth graders have access to online tutoring facilitated through external providers.
This systemic approach significantly expanded the reach of the district’s academic intervention efforts. Before the statewide initiative was implemented, the local reading intervention program served approximately 96 students each week. Lemoine reports that that figure surged to more than 430 students after a single year of operation.
"From the get-go, our philosophy was: This is gonna require good teaching, not just programs," Lemoine says.
The district closely monitors student academic progress every two to three weeks, making real-time adjustments as necessary. Performance data tracked between the fall and spring assessments of the 2025-26 school year demonstrated notable increases in overall student achievement. Furthermore, the Louisiana Department of Education recognized the district as a Model of Excellence for its innovative approach to high-dosage tutoring. By December 2024, more than 45% of its kindergarten through fifth-grade students were receiving tutoring—more than double the previous participation rate—and approximately 60% successfully reached academic benchmarks on their targeted literacy skills during the initial progress-monitoring checkpoint.
"We have figured out a way to use the resources we have smarter," Lemoine states. "Our high-dose tutoring program is truly an example of that: Work smarter, not harder."
Although West Feliciana Parish Schools is relying on a careful blend of state and local funds to keep the initiative running, district leadership remains firmly committed to sustaining the program over the long term. Superintendent Hollis Milton emphasizes that the district’s local success proves high-quality academic support does not have to vanish simply because a specific federal funding stream has come to an end.
"If something’s working, you find the will, and then you’re gonna find the way," Milton concludes.