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 financial backing has officially expired, education leaders nationwide are scrambling to find alternative revenue streams and structural adjustments to keep those successful programs afloat.
Between March 2020 and March 2021, the United States Congress allocated nearly $190.5 billion to public education through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund. This represented the largest one-time federal investment in K-12 education in American history, serving as a critical lifeline for schools attempting to navigate unprecedented remote learning challenges and subsequent academic backsliding. While the funding ended in phases between 2022 and 2024, some districts received administrative extensions to draw down their remaining balances, allowing a temporary cushion before the fiscal cliff fully arrived.
In response to the expiration of ESSER, school districts have taken varied approaches. Some have had to pause or significantly scale back their tutoring initiatives due to budgetary constraints, while others are working aggressively to save these academic supports by weaving them directly into their core academic systems and permanent operational budgets. A 2026 analysis of 35 school districts conducted by the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) revealed a mixed landscape: eight districts had significantly reduced their tutoring programs, and another eight had experienced a temporary pause or operational disruption after ESSER funding concluded. However, 19 districts—representing more than half of the institutions studied—successfully preserved or even expanded their tutoring programs despite the loss of federal dollars.
Educational research consistently demonstrates that high-impact tutoring, frequently called high-dosage tutoring, has been the most powerful intervention deployed to make up for pandemic-related learning loss. Typically, these programs occur at least three times a week, providing targeted instruction that coordinates closely with regular classroom work. According to the NSSA, programs featuring frequent sessions over a duration of at least 10 weeks, delivered either individually or in small groups using data-driven instruction, can generate anywhere from three to 15 months of additional academic learning.
Despite these proven academic gains, the financial reality remains daunting. Research from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University estimates that high-impact tutoring costs between $1,200 and $2,500 per student annually. This substantial price tag makes it exceptionally difficult for many school districts to maintain the programs without the dedicated infusion of federal ESSER dollars.
For schools that have heavily invested in these programs and are striving to retain their benefits, the central challenge is making tutoring a permanent, standard fixture of the educational ecosystem. Devon Wible, vice president of teaching and learning at Catapult Learning, an organization that provides tutoring programs to schools, observes that districts across several states are increasingly viewing tutoring not as an optional add-on, but as a foundational layer of academic support.
“A few years ago, when ESSER funds were here, the conversation was, ‘Let’s see if it works,’” Wible says. “Now it’s, ‘How do we sustain this?’”
Building Tutoring Into Existing Systems
One of the primary ways districts are trying to make tutoring last is by embedding it directly into the regular school day and aligning it with existing academic-support systems. While this structural integration does not completely eliminate the financial cost of providing tutoring, it is significantly less expensive than creating a separate, standalone extracurricular program outside of normal school hours.
Wible notes that some districts have creatively added specific intervention periods or “WIN” (What I Need) blocks into their master daily schedules. This adjustment provides students with dedicated time for extra academic support without pulling them away from core classroom instruction. Furthermore, this approach encourages tighter, more productive collaboration among classroom teachers, specialized tutors, and intervention staff, who can regularly share student data and work together toward common academic goals.
Under this model, tutoring is explicitly designed to reinforce classroom instruction rather than operate in a silo. A student struggling with grade-level reading, for instance, might receive targeted coaching on foundational phonics and decoding skills while continuing to engage with grade-level literary texts alongside their peers 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 exit the program and return to independent learning.
“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 integrated approach firsthand. A Catapult analysis tracking roughly 700 students from kindergarten through third grade across 12 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 structured tutoring, the share of students in kindergarten and first grade performing at or above grade level jumped dramatically from 11% to 55%, according to Wible.
Protecting What Works
While finding alternative funding sources is a major hurdle, David Blazar, an associate professor of education policy at the University of Maryland, suggests that an even greater concern may be what happens to program quality when schools cannot secure new revenue 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 initiatives. The analysis found that 18 districts offered tutoring featuring several key components associated with stronger implementation, including small-group instruction, frequent weekly sessions, and delivery during regular school hours.
Although the research concentrates specifically on Maryland, it provides valuable insight into the broader strategic dilemmas facing school districts nationwide as they attempt to sustain tutoring in a post-relief funding era. Blazar anticipates that districts under financial pressure may consider increasing group sizes, reducing the frequency of weekly sessions, or turning to lower-cost, lower-quality providers rather than eliminating tutoring altogether.
“The more likely change is quieter and, in some ways, more consequential: erosion of the design features that make tutoring work,” Blazar says. “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.”
Blazar’s analysis of implementation plans under the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future from 2024 to 2027 revealed that Maryland districts planned to restructure their daily schedules specifically to keep tutoring alive. Because tutoring serves as a core mandate of the state’s landmark education reform policy, he expects Maryland districts to maintain a firm 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 says.
For districts everywhere trying to stretch limited local and state dollars, the ultimate challenge lies in figuring out where to trim administrative or operational costs without weakening the core pedagogical features that make high-impact tutoring effective in the first place, Blazar notes.
One District’s Approach
West Feliciana Parish Schools in Louisiana offers a compelling example of a local school district successfully identifying new funding sources to fully integrate tutoring into the regular school day. The district had maintained basic intervention and tutoring practices prior to 2024, but it expanded and formalized its school-day high-dosage tutoring program during the 2024-25 school year with critical assistance from state funding available through Louisiana’s Accelerate: High-Dosage Tutoring initiative.
To accommodate the program, the district engineered a schoolwide master schedule featuring a dedicated 30- to 50-minute block each day when core instruction pauses. During this designated window, students are divided into skill-based groups and report either to their primary 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 that specific block remain in the classroom to work independently, engaging with educational software or reading library books. Meanwhile, fourth and fifth-grade students receive online tutoring facilitated through external providers.
This strategic approach significantly expanded the reach of the district’s academic intervention program. Before the initiative was scaled up, the local reading intervention program served approximately 96 students a week. Lemoine reports that that figure surged to more than 430 students after just one year of implementation.
“From the get-go, our philosophy was: This is gonna require good teaching, not just programs,” Lemoine says.
The district closely monitors student progress every two to three weeks, making pedagogical adjustments as necessary. Lemoine points to district assessment data demonstrating clear academic gains between the fall and spring assessments of the 2025-26 school year. According to Northwest Evaluation Association Measures of Academic Progress data, the district recorded notable increases in student performance metrics.
The district’s innovative work earned it recognition from the Louisiana Department of Education as a Model of Excellence for its approach to high-dosage tutoring. By December 2024, more than 45% of its kindergarten through fifth-grade students were receiving targeted tutoring—more than double the proportion served previously. Furthermore, about 60% of participating students reached their established benchmark on targeted literacy skills at the very first progress-monitoring checkpoint.
“We have figured out a way to use the resources we have smarter,” Lemoine says. “Our high-dose tutoring program is truly an example of that: Work smarter, not harder.”
Although the district currently relies on a combination of state and local funding streams to keep the program operating, leadership remains firmly committed to sustaining it for the long term. Superintendent Hollis Milton emphasizes that the district’s notable 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’s working, you find the will, and then you’re gonna find the way,” Milton says.