How Summer Tutoring Can Help Different Types of Students

For children and parents, school closures everywhere have turned their worlds upside down.

Summer is an important time for children to catch up and prepare for the 2020-2021 school year. A recent report published by the nonprofit NWEA (“The COVID-19 slide: What summer learning loss can tell us about the potential impact of school closures on student academic achievement”) at https://www.nwea.org/ states, “Preliminary COVID slide estimates suggest students will return in fall 2020 with roughly 70% of the learning gains in reading relative to a typical school year.”

In math, the study shows that students will return “with less than 50% of the learning gains, and in some grades, nearly a full year behind what we would observe in normal conditions.” Summer learning, either through the online curriculum offered by schools and other organizations this summer or through private tutoring, can make a big difference, and it will help those who have fallen behind or are looking to get ahead.

Different approaches can help different types of students:

High-achieving students – The COVID-19 school closures affect struggling students the most, but they impact students who are used to pushing themselves and exceeding classroom expectations, too. These students can use summer to continue learning at the pace they enjoy most so they do not veer off course from their goals. For high school students, those might include attending competitive colleges or earning college scholarships.

Students who were already behind – Surveys by the EdWeek Research Center show that teachers believe students are spending far less time on learning than before schools closed, and teachers are teaching less as well (especially in terms of presenting new material). Come fall, students who were behind before COVID-19 will be even further behind. Schools will likely adapt for this reality, but parents should do what they can to help their children close those learning gaps.

Students who struggled in a subject (or more) before COVID-19 – It’s very common for children to struggle with one or more subjects at some point throughout their school careers. If a child was grappling with math up until March, remote learning certainly didn’t help the situation. Students like this are at risk because they could very easily continue slipping downward. It’s essential that parents help their children overcome those challenges that existed for them before coronavirus so they don’t continue to worsen.

Unmotivated students – Unfortunately, remote learning simply doesn’t work well for some students. It demands some level of independence, even if parents are on hand for support, and expects that students are motivated to do the work expected of them. Students who aren’t this way are likely to regress, especially if their school removed any penalty for not handing in assignments and/or went to pass/fail grading. These students may benefit from private tutoring.

If you’d like to have your child evaluated to see where he or she is compared to grade-level expectations, contact the Fort Lauderdale Huntington at 954-488-2222 or visit http://www.huntingtonhelps.com.