For several years, federal pandemic relief funds helped school districts across the United States expand “high-impact” or “high-dosage” tutoring programs that proved instrumental in improving student learning and recovering from academic disruption. Now that the main source of that federal funding has expired, education leaders nationwide are scrambling to keep those successful programs afloat, navigating a difficult landscape of shrinking budgets, structural redesigns, and hard choices about educational priorities.
Between March 2020 and March 2021, 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 U.S. history. This unprecedented influx of capital allowed schools to launch comprehensive academic recovery initiatives. While the funding ended in phases between 2022 and 2024—though certain districts managed to secure temporary extensions—the sudden fiscal cliff left educational administrators searching for alternative revenue streams to maintain the momentum they had built.
In response to the expiration of ESSER, school districts have taken varied paths. Some have paused or significantly scaled back their tutoring initiatives due to prohibitive costs, while others are working desperately to save them by weaving them directly into their core academic systems and standard operating budgets. A 2026 analysis of 35 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 temporary pause or disruption after the ESSER funding concluded. However, 19 districts—representing more than half of those studied—successfully preserved or even expanded their tutoring programs despite the fiscal pressures.
Extensive educational research shows that high-impact tutoring, frequently described as high-dosage tutoring, stands as the single most powerful intervention deployed to make up for pandemic-related learning loss. Typically, these programs occur at least three times a week, providing highly targeted academic instruction delivered in close coordination with regular classroom coursework. According to the NSSA, programs featuring frequent sessions over a minimum of 10 weeks, delivered either individually or in small groups alongside data-driven instruction, can generate anywhere from three to 15 months of additional academic learning.
Despite these proven benefits, the financial reality remains a formidable barrier. Research from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University estimates that high-impact tutoring costs between $1,200 and $2,500 per student annually. Without the safety net of ESSER funds, meeting these recurring costs has proven extraordinarily difficult for many school systems.
For schools that invested heavily in these interventions and are now trying to retain their hard-won academic gains, the central challenge is transforming tutoring from a temporary pandemic measure into a permanent fixture of public education. Devon Wible, vice president of teaching and learning at Catapult Learning, an organization that provides tutoring services to schools, observes that districts across multiple states are increasingly viewing tutoring not as an add-on, but as a foundational layer of routine academic support.
A few years ago, when the ESSER funds were actively flowing, the prevailing administrative conversation centered on experimentation and validation, with leaders asking whether the strategy actually worked. Today, Wible notes, the fundamental question has shifted entirely to sustainability and how districts can afford to keep the programs running indefinitely.
Building Tutoring Into Existing Systems
One of the primary strategies districts are utilizing to make tutoring last is embedding it directly into the regular school day and aligning it with existing academic-support systems. While this structural integration does not eliminate the inherent cost of providing tutoring, it is significantly less expensive than creating a separate, standalone extracurricular program that requires outside-of-school staffing, transportation, and facilities.
Wible explains that some districts have creatively modified their daily schedules by adding dedicated intervention periods or "WIN" (What I Need) blocks. These designated times give students access to vital extra academic support without pulling them away from core classroom instruction. This approach also encourages much tighter, more effective collaboration among classroom teachers, specialized tutors, and intervention staff, who routinely share student data and work together toward common academic goals.
The tutoring itself is meticulously designed to align with daily classroom instruction. If a student is struggling with grade-level reading, Wible notes that they might receive targeted coaching on foundational reading skills during the intervention block while continuing to actively engage with grade-level texts during regular class time. Schools utilize ongoing student data to identify precise academic needs, dynamically adjust instruction, and determine the exact moment a student is ready to successfully exit the program.
Ultimately, the shared goal is for students to experience classroom instruction, daily intervention, and targeted tutoring as one coherent learning experience rather than disconnected academic silos, according to Wible.
Wible has witnessed the tangible impact of this integrated approach firsthand. An analysis conducted by Catapult Learning of approximately 700 students spanning kindergarten through third grade across 12 Massachusetts school districts found that children made substantial literacy gains after receiving high-impact tutoring, with some achieving up to five additional months of reading progress. In one particular Massachusetts district, the results were especially striking: after just 12 weeks of tutoring, the share of kindergarten and first-grade students performing at or above grade level jumped dramatically from 11% to 55%.
Protecting What Works
David Blazar, an associate professor of education policy at the University of Maryland, suggests that an even greater concern than complete program elimination may be the silent degradation of program quality when schools cannot find alternative funding sources and are forced to cut spending on tutoring.
Blazar recently co-authored a University of Maryland study examining tutoring programs across all 24 of Maryland’s school districts, analyzing how local educational agencies are designing and scaling their academic interventions. The analysis discovered that 18 districts offered tutoring featuring key characteristics associated with stronger implementation, such as small-group instruction, frequent weekly sessions, and delivery during normal school hours.
Although the research focused specifically on Maryland, it provides valuable insight into the broader strategic dilemmas facing districts nationwide as they attempt to sustain tutoring after the expiration of pandemic relief funds. Blazar anticipates that as financial pressures mount, cash-strapped districts may consider increasing group sizes, reducing session frequencies, or turning to lower-cost, lower-quality providers rather than outright eliminating tutoring programs.
The more likely change is quieter and, in many ways, far more consequential: the gradual erosion of the exact design features that make tutoring effective in the first place, Blazar warns. When administrators are forced to find savings wherever possible, instructional dosage and other components of quality—including how many students work simultaneously with the same tutor—are very likely to be compromised.
Despite these risks, Blazar’s analysis of implementation plans under the landmark Blueprint for Maryland’s Future from 2024 to 2027 found that Maryland districts actively planned to restructure their daily schedules to keep tutoring operational. Because tutoring serves as a core mandate of the state’s ambitious education policy, he expects Maryland districts to maintain a firm institutional commitment to the strategy.
He believes these districts will continue their programs because tutoring is a core component of the Blueprint and because there is a growing, cross-sector consensus that tutoring is a critical resource for improving student outcomes, meaning the expenditure is widely viewed as money well spent. For school systems everywhere attempting to stretch limited local and state dollars, the ultimate challenge is figuring out where to trim administrative costs without weakening the core pedagogical features that make high-impact tutoring successful.
One District’s Approach
West Feliciana Parish Schools in Louisiana provides a clear example of a district successfully identifying alternative funding sources to permanently integrate tutoring into the regular school day. The district maintained basic intervention and tutoring practices prior to 2024, but significantly expanded and formalized its school-day high-dosage tutoring program during the 2024-25 academic year with vital assistance from state funding made available through Louisiana’s Accelerate: High-Dosage Tutoring initiative.
The district established a comprehensive schoolwide master schedule featuring a dedicated 30- to 50-minute block each day when standard core instruction pauses entirely. During this designated window, students are divided into skill-based groups and report either to their regular classroom teacher or a specialized interventionist for high-dosage tutoring, according to Jodi Lemoine, director of accountability at West Feliciana Parish Schools.
Students who are not receiving tutoring during this block remain inside the classroom to work independently, utilizing educational software or reading library books. For fourth and fifth graders, the district incorporated online tutoring delivered through qualified external providers.
This strategic approach dramatically expanded the reach of the district’s intervention program. Before the initiative was formally launched, the district’s reading intervention program served about 96 students a week. Lemoine reports that this number surged to more than 430 students after just one year of implementation.
From the very beginning, the district’s core philosophy was that effective intervention requires exceptional teaching rather than simply relying on commercial programs, Lemoine emphasizes.
The district closely monitors student academic progress every two to three weeks, making real-time adjustments as necessary. Lemoine points to district assessment data showing measurable academic gains between the fall and spring assessments of the 2025-26 school year. According to data from the Northwest Evaluation Association’s Measures of Academic Progress, the district recorded notable increases in student performance metrics.
The Louisiana Department of Education recognized West Feliciana Parish Schools 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 proportion that had received support previously. Furthermore, about 60% of participating students successfully reached the established benchmark on their targeted literacy skills by the time of the first progress-monitoring checkpoint.
The district is currently relying on a thoughtful combination of state and local funding streams to keep the program operational, but school leadership remains deeply committed to sustaining it for the long term. Superintendent Hollis Milton asserts that the district’s measurable success demonstrates conclusively that effective tutoring does not have to disappear simply because a specific federal funding stream has come to an end.
If something is genuinely working for children, Milton concludes, a community will find the institutional will, and subsequently, they are going to find the way to make it happen.