Working Paper: NBER ID: w23792
Authors: Roland G. Fryer Jr.; Meghan Howard Noveck
Abstract: This study examines the impact on student achievement of high-dosage reading tutoring for middle school students in New York City Public Schools, using a school-level randomized field experiment. Across three years, schools offered at least 130 hours of 4-on-1 tutoring based on a guided reading model, which consisted of 1-on-1 read alouds, independent reading, vocabulary review, and group discussion. We show that, at the mean, tutoring has a positive and significant effect on school attendance, a positive, but insignificant, effect on English Language Arts (ELA) state test scores and no effect on math state test scores. There is important heterogeneity by race. For black students, our treatment increased attendance by 2.0 percentage points (control mean 92.4 percent) and ELA scores by 0.09 standard deviations per year – two times larger than the effect of the Promise Academy Middle School in the Harlem Children’s Zone and KIPP Charter Middle Schools on reading achievement. For Hispanic students, the treatment effect is 0.8 percentage points on attendance (control mean 92.0 percent) and 0.01 standard deviations per year on ELA scores. We argue that the difference between the effectiveness of tutoring for black and Hispanic students is best explained by the average tutor characteristics at the schools they attend.
Keywords: high-dosage tutoring; reading achievement; New York City; randomized field experiment
JEL Codes: I20; J00
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| average tutor characteristics (A22) | racial differences in treatment effects (J15) |
| high-dosage tutoring (A21) | school attendance (I21) |
| high-dosage tutoring (A21) | ELA state test scores (Y10) |
| high-dosage tutoring (A21) | math scores (C12) |
| high-dosage tutoring (A21) | attendance for Black students (I24) |
| high-dosage tutoring (A21) | attendance for Hispanic students (I24) |