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For years, the national conversation on tutoring has been stuck in catch-up mode: How quickly can we help students recover from pandemic learning loss? But focusing only on remediation sells tutoring short. Tutoring, done right, is not just about catching students up. It is also about cultivating belonging, building confidence and, perhaps most overlooked, sparking the next generation of teachers.

At Teach For America, we have spent the past five years learning what it takes to make tutoring work at scale through our Ignite Fellowship. We have reached over 40 communities, partnered with hundreds of schools and trained more than 5,500 virtual tutors. In the past school year, more than 2,000 college fellows or tutors delivered nearly 200,000 hours of customized learning.

The academic results are compelling: Test scores for middle school math students grew at up to 2.5 times the expected rate, and elementary readers grew up to three times faster than average. But the full story goes beyond scores. Tutoring, if designed with care, can advance student learning, support current teachers and inspire and prepare the next generation of educators. Here’s what we’ve learned:

Lesson 1: Training and Support Must Be Non-Negotiable

Too many tutoring initiatives assume goodwill and enthusiasm are enough. They are not. Without structured preparation, tutors risk becoming an inconsistent add-on rather than a transformative force. Ignite builds training into the model itself. Experienced site leaders at each partner school provide curriculum-aligned onboarding and ongoing coaching. This investment matters. Students report not just better understanding of content, but deeper confidence in their ability to learn. Schools see tutoring as part of their instructional strategy, not a Band-aid.

If policymakers want tutoring to stick, they need to fund programs that take support seriously.

Lesson 2: Technology Should Expand Relationships, Not Replace Them

Ed tech is often pitched as a shortcut to efficiency. But high-dosage, virtual tutoring is not a shortcut. It is relational and strategic. Teach For America Ignite uses technology to make those relationships possible at scale, not to substitute for them. Virtual platforms connect fellows to students and teachers across 43 communities, including rural areas where schools struggle to recruit talent.

At Alliance Marine Innovation & Technology in Los Angeles, eighth graders who were three grade levels behind in math saw a 77-point jump in state assessment scores after a year of TFA Ignite tutoring. The technology enabled access, but human relationships drove the breakthrough. As one student put it: “My Ignite fellow could understand me like no other.”

The lesson? It is possible for students and educators, particularly when both are members of generations who grew up surrounded by rapidly changing technology, to use tech as a tool to build important human relationships that accelerate learning.

Lesson 3: Tutoring Is a Teacher Pipeline Strategy, Whether We Treat It That Way or Not

Perhaps the most underreported story about tutoring is what it means for the future of teaching. A recent Stanford study provides the first causal evidence that tutoring can spark interest in teaching careers. Using Teach For America’s tutoring and teacher training programs, the research finds that working as tutor for Ignite nearly triples the likelihood of applying to TFA’s teacher program, with the largest effects among men, people of color, and students who didn’t major in education. That is a breakthrough in a sector facing constant shortages and a workforce that doesn’t reflect the students it serves.

TFA Ignite is living proof of this. Since the program launched, 550 fellows have gone on to join Teach For America’s teaching corps. This year alone, 280 new teachers entered classrooms because they were inspired by the impact they had as tutors. For Destiny Edens, a North Carolina A&T undergrad, tutoring became the bridge to a calling she had not considered before. She began tutoring second graders in literacy and discovered a passion that has now led her to join the TFA corps as a middle school science teacher in Philadelphia.

Education leaders talk endlessly about how to attract this generation to teaching as if the pipeline is broken. Tutoring offers one way to strengthen it, by giving future teachers direct experience, mentorship and proof that they belong in the classroom.

If educators keep treating tutoring as an emergency response, we will miss its long-term potential. Tutoring is not just a path to accelerate learning, it is a path to accelerate leadership. It advances growth for students and jump-starts careers for educators. If we’re all serious about helping students thrive and building the next generation of educators then tutoring must be part of the future of schooling.

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