Charles
Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission
to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
In last week’s blog I wrote
about a proposal to provide tutoring as a means of closing the achievement gap
between the students most disadvantaged by COVID-19 and those who were least
affected. That blog focused on the unfortunate tendency to select familiar,
preferred solutions to problems that are ill-defined. I suggested some
questions one might ask to avoid putting the cart (the solution) before the
horse (defining the problem clearly).
This week I want to connect with my inner Scrooge and conduct
a thought experiment about providing tutoring on a system-wide basis. There are
approximately 5,000,000 elementary and secondary students in Canada. That’s
about 500,000 per grade. We know from the accumulated evidence that tutoring is
most effective in improving reading during the early years of school. But is it
the most cost-effective way, always keeping in mind that dollars spent in this
project can’t be used elsewhere?
The literature indicates that the costs of mounting a
tutoring program to supplement the instruction students receive at school are
approximately $2,000 per student. These costs include training for tutors,
criminal records checks, supervision, material, and payments to supervisors and
often to tutors. Even when tutors are volunteers, the costs are considerable.
The more effective tutoring programs are conducted one-to-one
or in very small groups three times per week. We do not have an appraisal of
the magnitude of the difference in reading between the students least affected
and those most affected by COVID-19. Let’s assume, however, that the gap can be
eliminated in a year’s time with the use of a well-run tutoring program. And for
the purposes of this thought experiment, let’s assume that only 10% of the
students need this program; the other 90% will overcome the educational gap on
their own, and/or with regular school instruction, and/or with family support. The
cost for a one year, Canada-wide tutoring program for the 10% of Canada’s grade
two students (50,000) most disadvantaged by COVID-19 would be about $100
million.
There is little doubt that the educational gap extends beyond
10% of Canada’s grade two student population to include a larger proportion of students
at most, if not all, grade levels. To reduce a 10% gap across all grade levels through
tutoring requires more than $1billion per year.
Pursuing a tutoring program or any other program – as
effective as it might be –requires careful consideration of a variety of
factors. At a minimum it would be helpful to know the magnitude of the problem,
the available alternatives for addressing the problem, as well as the cost and
the expected impact of each alternative. That information would enable us to compare
tutoring to efficient and effective alternatives (hiring additional teachers or
educational assistants, for example, or providing existing teachers with
professional learning to increase their effectiveness) and to the economic and
social costs of doing nothing.
It sounds cold and calculating. It is calculating, but that’s
not something that we are accustomed to doing. If we did it more often, perhaps
we would make better use of the scarce resources we have for the benefit of
students.
Season’s
Greetings and Happy New Year
My blog
will return in 2022!