Using Online Tutoring to Address COVID-19 Learning Loss and Create Jobs
Summary
The Biden-Harris Administration should create a plan for a public, online platform to connect teachers with college students and recent graduates to serve as tutors for K-12 students. One-on-one tutoring is a proven intervention that improves children’s educational competencies and increases students’ self-confidence. Along with supporting students, this platform could provide needed employment for young adults and enable teachers and students together to produce improved educational outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the closure of more than 124,000 schools with the majority of students now learning online. Meanwhile, millions of college students have lost part-time work or are graduating into a historically difficult job market that does not have positions for them to fill. Just as the New Deal created work programs that both created employment and improved our national landscape, our country requires creative solutions that can meet the urgent needs of our time, can be quickly scaled up using modern technology and can adjust to the changing needs dictated by the cycles of the coronavirus.
Without a robust education system that prepares our youth for future careers in key sectors, our national security and competitiveness are at risk.
The education R&D ecosystem must be a learning-oriented network committed to the principles of innovation that the system itself strives to promote across best practices in education and learning.
Across the country in small towns and large cities, rural communities and the suburbs, millions of young people are missing school at astounding rates.
CHIPS is poised to ramp up demand for STEM graduates, but the nation’s education system is unprepared to produce them.