Analysis: Tutoring, Summer School, Pods — Survey Finds Parents Aren’t So Thrilled About Most K-12 COVID Recovery Solutions on the Table
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After more than a year of most students attending school either fully or partially online, school districts all over the country are considering how to address the current academic and social needs of children and prepare them for the upcoming 2021-22 academic year. Various policies and practices are being discussed for the summer and the coming year, with additional funding provided by the American Rescue Plan.
One important lesson learned from the ongoing school hesitancy crisis is the significant influence parents have in determining the educational path for their children. Education leaders must take into account the opinions of parents, otherwise the reopening of schools can be a failure, as students will not show up. Therefore, we conducted a survey among a nationally representative sample of approximately 1,500 K-12 parents from the Understanding America Study, to understand their perspectives on a range of potential practices and policies. The results of this survey have brought many surprising insights.
Limited enthusiasm among parents for in-person summer school, tutoring, or learning pods
Among the top recommendations made by researchers and considered by districts are in-person summer school, in-person tutoring during and after school, and learning pods. We asked parents whether their child’s school currently offers any of these interventions, whether their child is or will be participating if offered, and if they would enroll their child if given the opportunity.
As of the end of May, only a third of parents (34 percent) reported that their child’s schools were offering in-person summer school. Of those whose schools offered it, only a quarter had enrolled their child (25 percent). Moreover, only 16 percent of parents whose schools were not offering in-person summer school said they would enroll their child if given the opportunity.
The situation is similar for in-person tutoring during and after school. Roughly a quarter of parents stated that their child’s school offers in-person tutoring (27 percent for both during and after school). Among this group, 34 percent of children participate during school hours, and 29 percent participate after school. Among parents who currently do not have this opportunity, 30 percent said they would enroll their child for tutoring during school hours, and 25 percent would do so for after-school tutoring.
The use of in-person learning pods is also low, with only 17 percent of parents reporting that their child’s school offers this option. Of those, only 38 percent of students are participating. If given the chance, 25 percent of parents said they would enroll their child in a learning pod.
Although the proportion of parents indicating interest in in-person summer school, tutoring, and learning pods is likely higher than before the pandemic, it is still limited at present, even when districts are investing resources into these interventions.
Parents do not support increasing instructional time or most other policies under consideration
We also asked parents about their support for a range of policies aimed at addressing the negative learning effects of the pandemic. These policies included increasing instructional time and implementing changes to grading and grade-level promotion. The only policy that received majority support from parents was giving students the option to repeat the 2020-21 grade level, with 64 percent expressing support or strong support. However, this policy had significantly less support among Black (51 percent) and Hispanic (58 percent) parents compared to white parents (70 percent). It also had less support (25 percent) from parents in the lowest income bracket (less than $25,000 per year) compared to those in the highest income bracket (over $150,000 per year, 78 percent). Similarly, parents with lower levels of education (high school diploma or less) expressed less support (60 percent) compared to those with at least a bachelor’s degree (71 percent).
Only a minority of parents supported other policies suggested in the survey, such as implementing pass/fail grading instead of A-F letter grades (29 percent), having a longer school year and shorter summer vacation (23 percent), and extending school days (19 percent). The least popular option was promoting students to the next grade even if they do not meet the requirements, with support from only 15 percent of parents.
Parents want to continue utilizing technology, including for tutoring purposes.
Implications
To begin with, it is worth noting that parents recognize the benefits of remote education and believe that certain aspects of it should be incorporated into their children’s K-12 education. One notable area of support is remote tutoring, which aligns with the preferences of policymakers and the research that supports tutoring as a crucial solution for helping students recover academically and emotionally after the pandemic. The widespread distribution of devices over the past year, along with improvements in internet access and quality provided by the American Rescue Plan, have significantly facilitated remote tutoring and other online features that parents appreciate.
However, there are also challenges that arise from these findings. Many parents seem to have mixed feelings about the COVID-19 recovery agenda, much like teachers. There is limited support for increasing learning time, as the effectiveness of such measures is uncertain according to research. Additionally, there is a noticeable demand for in-person tutoring and other remediation policies, which are popular among researchers and policymakers. While summer school, tutoring, and learning pods have proven effective in research settings, their success in real-life, in-person scenarios depends on the willingness of individuals to participate. This suggests that it may be necessary to help parents understand the benefits of these programs for their children or acknowledge that parents and children may simply be too exhausted and in need of a summer break to recover.
These results indicate the need for education leaders to engage in conversations with parents to determine which programs and policies they would support and actively participate in. Relying solely on the allocation of COVID-19 relief funds to create programs may not yield desired outcomes if the level of participation is insufficient to address students’ academic and social/emotional needs.
The authors of this article, Anna Rosefsky Saavedra and Morgan Polikoff, are grateful for the financial support provided by the National Science Foundation Grants No. 2037179 and 2120194. It is important to note that the opinions, findings, and recommendations expressed in this material are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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