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A core tenet of the high-impact tutoring movement has been that embedding extra assistance into the school day provides the best chance for improving student outcomes. But as tutoring moves from pandemic recovery strategy to long-term tool, it may be time to rethink the potential of afterschool programs. 

High-impact tutoring was widely embraced by thousands of school districts as they grappled with learning loss, whose deficits have proven difficult to overcome even in 2026. In its ideal form, is delivered to no more than four students at least three times a week, for at least 30 minutes per session, by a specific adult using high-quality materials aligned with a school鈥檚 curriculum. Most such programs take place during the school day, which ensures access to all students and signals that the tutoring is core to their academic progress. Getting students the requisite sessions and minutes to yield meaningful progress is , according to and advocates.

Afterschool tutoring, as a result, has taken a backseat. As tutoring’s popularity continues to grow, however, some providers and schools are applying the lessons learned about high-impact tutoring to out-of-school programs that have yielded impressive results. 鈥檚 afterschool model, for example, has helped students in California gain in math, on average, and 92% of parents say they would recommend the program. In Louisiana, helped students in less than six months of afterschool tutoring. 

As part of ongoing research into the high-impact tutoring movement, I spoke with educators and providers about the success of these two afterschool programs, both of which launched after the pandemic.聽

Elsie Whitlow Stokes Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., had tried working with two providers to build tutoring into the day. But for a language immersion charter school already spending additional academic time helping students learn Spanish or French, finding time during regular hours tutoring was a struggle. So this school year, Maribel Wan, Stokes鈥� chief academic officer, started offering Step Up鈥檚 afterschool tutoring program to 59 students in grades 2 to 5 who are around one grade level below where they should be. Students meet twice a week with their tutors, who are college students paid through work-study at their schools.

Wan says early metrics show improvement in the students’ confidence and attitude toward schoolwork, and she hopes the tutoring will pay off academically as well. In other words, she hopes Stokes will find the same success with tutoring as Monlux Elementary in Los Angeles. Monlux started working with Step Up Tutoring in January 2022 as the school, like so many across the United States, struggled to close achievement gaps that widened during the pandemic. That year, just 43% of Monlux students scored as proficient on the California state math assessment. Three years later, on the, 62% of Monlux students met proficiency. Principal Hermineh Markosyan, who launched the partnership with Step Up, told me she attributes much of their math improvement to tutoring. 

Part of the program’s strategy is to engage parents as partners in their children鈥檚 academic progress. Estefany Gomez is on the frontline of that family engagement as a Step Up tutor. She has met with a student at another L.A. district school twice weekly for three years now, continuing even after Gomez graduated with a bachelor鈥檚 degree in molecular cell and developmental biology from UCLA in July 2025. 鈥淢y student will graduate from [Step Up] in a few months, and there鈥檚 still more to do. 鈥� It鈥檚 such an out-of-this-world feeling to see his growth over the last few years,鈥� she told me. 

In the initial postpandemic years, nobody knew whether virtual tutoring would work as well as in-person help. Today, however, multiple studies have shown that virtual tutoring is about as effective as in-person tutoring and resolves many of its operational challenges. There鈥檚 no travel time to a short in-person session, for example, schools in a variety of locations can recruit tutors without geographic constraints and college students can tutor during class breaks. Afterschool providers like Step Up have doubled down on these early findings even as others, like Louisiana鈥檚 Canopy Education, remain committed to in-person tutoring. 

Canopy is the largest provider of tutoring supported by the Steve Carter Tutoring Program, a state-funded voucher that gives students achieving below grade level $1,500 for after-school help using state-approved providers. When William Minton was building Canopy鈥檚 program, he explained to me, 鈥淲e knew we wanted to use teachers, and we knew that we could make it work if we paid them well.鈥� Teachers are paid $30 to $60 per hour to tutor after school with Canopy, running in-person small-group sessions at the same school where they work during the day. Almost 2,000 Louisiana students received tutoring last year through Canopy across 298 schools. Minton attributes their success to three key pieces: quality, communication and consistency.

More than three decades ago, the wrote, 鈥淔or the past 150 years, American public schools have held time constant and let learning vary.鈥� Elementary schools that have adjusted their daily schedules to include an intervention or tutoring block find this use of time worthwhile, but many schools struggle to change their master schedule. Tutoring has also found less purchase in middle and high schools, perhaps because timing becomes yet more complicated as students move to a day filled with course-specific class periods or block schedules. Leveraging out-of-school time, then, especially when closely linked to within-school activities, might allow more students and more schools to benefit from high-impact tutoring. 

The key to the success of these afterschool tutoring programs may be that both Step Up and Canopy incorporate critical aspects of high-impact tutoring into their models. Students are eligible for tutoring based on school assessment data, the dosage is 90 minutes per week or more, and the tutors use high-quality materials aligned with what students are learning in school. In spring 2025, Step Up Tutoring鈥檚 attendance rates were north of 75%, according to CEO Sam Olivieri.

鈥淲e work with a large percentage of non-English-speaking families and low-income families,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hey get weekly texts from their tutor about what their children are working on and an accomplishment they can celebrate. We鈥檝e really focused on bringing parents into the process and giving them a lot of visibility.鈥�

Canopy鈥檚 bet on family engagement is that using teachers as tutors in the physical school building creates stronger bonds between families and the school, while Step Up gives parents and tutors tremendous flexibility when it comes to scheduling sessions. 

Afterschool high-impact tutoring may thus be poised to help schools add effective learning time beyond the academic day, while bolstering parent involvement in their children鈥檚 learning and the school community. It鈥檚 certainly a trend to watch, and for more schools to consider.

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