For several years, federal pandemic relief funds helped school districts across the United States expand high-impact, or high-dosage, tutoring programs that proved vital to improving student learning. Now that the main source of that financial backing has expired, education leaders nationwide are scrambling to figure out how to keep those successful academic programs afloat without cutting critical corners.
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. This represented the largest one-time federal investment in K-12 education in the history of the country, designed specifically to help schools navigate operational disruptions and academic setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. While that massive influx of federal cash ended in phases between 2022 and 2024, some districts managed to secure temporary extensions to stretch their remaining dollars a little further.
In response to the expiration of ESSER, some school systems have been forced to pause or significantly scale back their tutoring operations. Others, however, are working tirelessly to save the initiatives 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 a split landscape: eight districts had significantly reduced their tutoring programs, and another eight had experienced a pause or disruption after the federal money dried up. Yet, 19 districts—representing more than half of those studied—successfully preserved or even expanded their tutoring initiatives despite the fiscal cliff.
Extensive educational research shows that high-impact tutoring, frequently referred to as high-dosage tutoring, has emerged as the most powerful intervention available to make up for pandemic-related learning loss. Typically, these rigorous programs occur at least three times a week, providing highly targeted instruction that coordinates directly 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 an impressive three to 15 months of additional academic learning for students.
However, delivering this level of intensive support comes at a steep financial price. 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 cushion of ESSER funds, meeting this recurring expense has become an uphill battle for many districts operating on tight local and state budgets.
For schools that have heavily invested in these programs and are striving to retain their hard-won benefits, the ultimate challenge is making tutoring a permanent, standard fixture of the school day. Devon Wible, vice president of teaching and learning at Catapult Learning, an organization that provides tutoring programs to schools, notes that districts in 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 recalls. "Now it’s, ‘How do we sustain this?’"
Building Tutoring Into Existing Systems
One of the primary ways cash-strapped 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 tutors, it is significantly less expensive than creating a separate, standalone extracurricular program outside of school hours.
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. Furthermore, this approach encourages much tighter collaboration among classroom teachers, specialized tutors, and intervention staff, who can regularly share student data and work collaboratively toward common academic goals.
Under this integrated model, tutoring is carefully designed to complement classroom learning. For example, a student who is struggling with grade-level reading might receive targeted coaching on foundational phonics and decoding skills while continuing to engage with age-appropriate texts alongside their peers during regular class time. Schools rely on ongoing student assessment data to identify specific academic needs, adjust instructional approaches in real time, and determine precisely when a student has mastered a skill 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 cohesive approach firsthand. A Catapult analysis tracking roughly 700 students in kindergarten through third grade across 12 Massachusetts school districts found that young learners 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 exceptionally 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
Despite these success stories, education policy experts warn that districts face hidden dangers when attempting to sustain programs on shrinking budgets. David Blazar, an associate professor of education policy at the University of Maryland, suggests that an even greater concern than program elimination is what happens to overall quality when schools cannot find alternative funding sources and resort to deep spending cuts.
Blazar recently co-authored a University of Maryland study examining tutoring programs across all 24 of Maryland’s school districts, analyzing how local education agencies are designing, funding, and scaling their initiatives. The analysis found that 18 districts offered tutoring featuring several key components associated with stronger educational implementation, such as small-group instruction, frequent weekly sessions, and delivery during regular school hours.
While the research centered specifically on Maryland, it offers broad insight into the difficult choices facing districts nationwide as they attempt to maintain tutoring in a post-relief-fund era. Blazar anticipates that as financial pressures mount, many districts will likely consider increasing student group sizes, reducing how often sessions occur, or turning to lower-cost commercial providers rather than completely shutting down their tutoring operations.
"The more likely change is quieter and, in some ways, more consequential: erosion of the design features that make tutoring work," Blazar warns. "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."
Fortunately, policy landscapes can help buffer these pressures in certain regions. Blazar’s analysis of implementation plans under the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future from 2024 to 2027 showed that Maryland districts planned to strategically restructure their daily schedules to keep tutoring afloat. Because tutoring serves as a core statutory mandate of the state’s landmark education policy, Blazar expects districts in Maryland 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 notes.
For districts everywhere trying to stretch limited dollars, the ultimate hurdle is figuring out where to trim administrative or operational costs without inadvertently weakening the core structural features that make high-impact tutoring effective in the first place, Blazar emphasizes.
One District’s Approach
West Feliciana Parish Schools in Louisiana offers a compelling example of a local school system successfully finding new funding sources to seamlessly integrate high-impact tutoring into the regular school day. While the district had some 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 available through the Louisiana Department of Education’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 traditional core instruction pauses. During this window, students are organized into flexible, 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.
Meanwhile, students who are not receiving tutoring during that specific block remain in the classroom to work independently, utilizing educational software programs or reading library books. For older students, such as fourth and fifth graders, the district incorporated online tutoring delivered by vetted external providers.
This thoughtful restructuring significantly widened the reach of the district’s academic intervention efforts. Before the new initiative launched, the local reading intervention program served roughly 96 students per week. Lemoine reports that after just one year under the expanded model, that number surged to more than 430 students weekly.
"From the get-go, our philosophy was: This is gonna require good teaching, not just programs," Lemoine says.
The district closely monitors individual student progress every two to three weeks, making instructional adjustments as necessary. Assessment data from the Northwest Evaluation Association’s Measures of Academic Progress showed notable, measurable increases in student performance between the fall and spring assessments of the 2025-26 school year.
The district’s innovative framework earned it recognition from the Louisiana Department of Education as a Model of Excellence. By December 2024, more than 45% of its kindergarten through fifth-grade students were actively receiving tutoring—more than double the participation rate of previous years. Furthermore, approximately 60% of participating students successfully reached the designated performance benchmark on their targeted literacy skills by the very first progress-monitoring checkpoint.
"We have figured out a way to use the resources we have smarter," Lemoine says, summarizing the district’s ethos. "Our high-dose tutoring program is truly an example of that: Work smarter, not harder."
Today, West Feliciana Parish Schools relies on a carefully managed combination of state and local funding streams to keep the program operational, but district leadership maintains an unwavering commitment to sustaining it over the long term. Superintendent Hollis Milton points out that the district’s documented success demonstrates clearly that effective tutoring does not have to vanish simply because a specific federal funding stream has run its course.
"If something’s working, you find the will, and then you’re gonna find the way," Milton says.