A
new paper being released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic
Research suggests a promising approach for helping the most challenged
students, who often arrive in high school several years behind their
peers.
The study, which was conducted by a team led by Jens Ludwig,
the co-director of the University of Chicago Urban Education Lab,
provided a program of intense tutoring, in combination with group
behavioral counseling, to a group of low-income ninth- and 10th-grade
African-American youths with weak math skills, track records of absences
or disciplinary problems. Those students learned in an eight-month
period the equivalent of what the average American high school student
learns in math over three years of school, as measured by standardized
test scores, over and above what a similar group of students who did not
receive the tutoring or counseling did. [Read more]
