A group providing intensive elementary-grade tutoring to North Carolina students says research supports the program's effectiveness and is asking state lawmakers for permanent funding for the program, as schools have dropped the program in cost-cutting moves.
The North Carolina Education Corps began tutoring students in 2021, largely to help navigate post-pandemic learning recovery, after students fell behind during remote learning.
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The Corps was funded partly using temporary federal pandemic stimulus dollars from the state and participating school districts, and eventually expanded to a few dozen school districts as recently as last school year. Tutors were paid largely using those stimulus dollars and local school funding, which often used to come from districts' own collection of temporary federal pandemic stimulus dollars.
With those stimulus dollars now gone, the program has shrunk from 26 districts and 7,500 students last year to 11 districts and 2,400 students this year.
John-Paul Smith, executive director of the Corps, didn't ask the General Assembly's Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee for a number. He's noted before that permanent state funding would help the Corps, particularly as stimulus dollars depleted everywhere.
Committee members largely asked questions about the research and the tutoring programs, rather than weighing in on funds raised.
How it works
The Corps pays tutors $15 to $35 per hour to work with kindergarten, first, second and third grade students.
Students are tutored individually or in groups of up to four, for 30 minutes three times per week, for 10 or more weeks. It's known as "high-dosage" or "high-impact" tutoring.
On average, students who are tutored by the Corps perform better on assessments than other students, including other students who are receiving different learning interventions, according to an analysis by the University of Michigan Youth Policy Lab. Students, on average, are gaining 2.2 extra months of learning.
The success has been largely concentrated among boys, and Corps leadership wasn't entirely sure why.
Smith said the Corps theorizes that the tutoring is especially helpful for boys.
"We think it's because boys have a harder time... paying attention in class, staying engaged, especially when they haven't mastered their skills in the first place," Smith said.
Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke, noted the significance of two months but questioned its limitations.
"Let's say we've got a student who is two years behind where he should be," Blackwell said, "It sounds like at this rate, how does that student ever catch up?"
Smith said that's why intervention in the earliest grades is pivotal.
"The earlier you intervene, the better," he said. "The later you wait, the harder it is for students to catch up."
Schools foot more than half of the cost of paying for tutors and any supplies, and the Corps provides the rest of the funding, which now comes from a mix of public and private contributions, but no regular state funding.
In 2024, several school systems told WRAL News they would be scaling back or eliminating their tutoring programs, including Durham, Chapel Hill-Carrboro, Cumberland, Person, Vance and Sampson counties. Many districts planned to reduce spending in other areas to continue some level of tutoring.
Who it serves
More than 26,000 North Carolina elementary school students have received tutoring from more than 1,300 tutors. The program has operated for at least some time in 33 North Carolina counties and 290 elementary schools, in rural, suburban and urban areas. The vast majority of the schools are lower-income, Title I schools.
Tutors are trained for 16 hours on literacy methods and other things and to work with higher-needs students. Students with dyslexia or certain learning disabilities are typically referred to teachers and interventionists with more training, not to the Corps.
Other tutoring programs
The Corps isn't the only source of high-dosage tutoring in North Carolina. Wake provides some volunteer opportunities and area nonprofits, though it still uses the Corps, as well. Union County Schools has found success with its own program, which pays tutors $25 per hour, and also presented to lawmakers on Tuesday.
That's not the case everywhere, Smith said, especially in rural districts that can "really struggle with the internal capacity to do what they're doing on a daily basis," let alone high-dosage tutoring. That makes the partnership with the Corps especially helpful in those areas, he said.
"They don't have the bandwidth to do this on their own," Smith said.