High-dosage tutoring didn't disappear when ESSER ended. Districts kept it past the September 2024 ARP ESSER obligation deadline, and they're now paying for it out of state and local funds. The question in 2026 is no longer "will tutoring survive?" The question is which providers survive the state-level quality screen that's replacing federal flexibility. FutureEd is tracking 41 tutoring-related bills across 19 states in the 2026 legislative session, and most of them write a specific operational definition of high-dosage tutoring directly into statute. If your current provider can't meet that definition, the next contract cycle is going to be a problem.
ESSER's expiration didn't kill tutoring. It reset who pays for it and who decides what counts. States are now the dominant funder of out-of-school-time academic support, and they're writing quality criteria into the funding mechanism. The 41 bills FutureEd is tracking in 2026 cluster around a near-identical definition: groups of four or fewer students, the same tutor over time, at least 30 minutes per session, three times a week, sustained over several months. That definition isn't arbitrary. It's pulled almost verbatim from the research consensus assembled by the National Student Support Accelerator (NSSA) at Stanford, the same body that built the provider quality framework states are now adopting as a screening tool.
The shift matters because federal ESSER money was relatively permissive. States approved a wide range of vendors, including app-based products and large-group online tutoring models that don't match the research definition. State tutoring grants in 2026 are narrower. They're written for embedded, relationship-based programs, and they're being paired with preferred-provider lists.
If you're a charter LEA director or a special programs coordinator, the practical question is: when the next state tutoring RFP or CARS-linked supplemental allocation comes down, will your current vendor qualify? In our experience working with California charter intervention programs, this is the conversation most schools haven't had yet. The default assumption is that any vendor approved during ESSER will roll forward. That assumption is breaking.
A+'s view is that 2026-27 will be the first contract cycle where state-level quality screens, modeled on NSSA's badging system or written directly into bill language, start excluding vendors whose model doesn't put students in small groups with the same tutor across a sustained schedule. App-based homework help, large-class virtual sessions, and on-demand tutor matching don't meet the statutory pattern most state bills are using. Coordinators who built their Tier 2 and Tier 3 intervention stack on those models in 2022-2023 are going to need to either swap providers or absorb the cost locally. Neither is a small lift mid-year.
The window to get intake documentation, scheduling records, and outcome data in order is now, before the next RFP cycle, not after.
The research basis for the small-group, sustained-dosage definition is well-established for an education intervention. Nickow, Oreopoulos, and Quan's 2020 meta-analysis, published as EdWorkingPaper 20-267 at Brown's Annenberg Institute, pooled 96 randomized tutoring studies and reported an overall pooled effect size of roughly 0.37 standard deviations. Brookings has written extensively about high-dosage tutoring as part of the K-12 evidence base. A+'s read of that literature is straightforward: the large effect sizes show up when the operational pattern is small-group, sustained, and relationship-based. When programs deviate from that pattern, the case for an effect at all gets thin.
NSSA's provider quality framework translates that research into operational criteria: group size, dosage, tutor continuity, training, alignment with classroom instruction, and assessment integration. A growing number of states are referencing the framework directly in legislation or RFP language. The Education Recovery Scorecard and the national tutoring nonprofit Accelerate have pushed in the same direction on research-aligned screening.
The catch is that most current state systems still rely on vendor self-reporting of these attributes. In our experience, that self-reporting has, in some cases, produced state contracts where the funded provider's model didn't match the research definition the contract was written around. The 2023 termination of New Mexico's $3.3M contract with Paper is the cautionary case being cited in policy circles.
Programs that show growth and match the 2026 bill language share four operational features:
| Feature | Research definition | Why it matters for screening |
|---|---|---|
| Group size | 1:1 to 1:4 | Mirrors the cap NSSA's framework and most 2026 RFPs adopt |
| Dosage | 3x/week, 30+ min, sustained over a semester | Matches NSSA framework and most 2026 bill text |
| Tutor continuity | Same tutor across sessions | Distinguishes embedded providers from on-demand platforms |
| Assessment integration | Aligned with MAP, iReady, or state assessments | Required for outcome reporting on most state grants |
According to FutureEd's tracker, the most active 2026 high-dosage tutoring legislation is concentrated in Oklahoma (S.B. 1292, S.B. 1366, H.B. 3373), New Mexico (S.B. 233), Arizona (H.B. 2423), and Georgia (H.B. 1030). Programs that already operate in the pattern above, including school-embedded tutoring, district-run intervention blocks, and a narrow set of external providers, clear the screen by default. Programs built on different assumptions don't.
A+ Tutoring, a California K-12 virtual intervention provider working with charter schools and homeschool LEAs, has operated in the small-group, sustained-dosage pattern since 2020. Our LTEL and Tier 3 cohorts run in groups of 4 or fewer, three sessions per week, with the same tutor across the intervention cycle, aligned to each partner school's MAP or iReady cadence.
The outcomes from our iLEAD partnership in 2024-25 reflect what the model is built to produce: in the Math Tier 3 cohort, 75% of students (9 of 12) reached growth benchmarks. In the ELA Tier 3 cohort, 87.5% (7 of 8) reached benchmark. In the combined Tier 3 cohort, 80% (16 of 20) hit 3-6x the national MAP Growth benchmark for their grade level.
A+'s perspective is that these outcomes are not unusual when the operational pattern matches the research. They're what the research predicts. The reason most national vendors don't replicate them isn't a coaching problem, it's a model problem. You can't get the effect sizes the meta-analyses describe when you're running 1:15 sessions, rotating tutors, or operating on an on-demand booking model.
If the answer is "during the ESSER application," it's worth revisiting before the next state RFP cycle.
Five steps a charter director or special programs coordinator can take this quarter, regardless of whether you ever talk to A+:
A+ Tutoring is a California-based virtual intervention provider serving charter schools, homeschool LEAs, and special programs offices. Our model is built around small-group, sustained-dosage instruction aligned to each partner's assessment cadence. A+ partner schools have demonstrated 75% of Math Tier 3 students, 87.5% of ELA Tier 3 students, and 80% of combined Tier 3 students reaching growth benchmarks, at 3-6x national MAP Growth norms.
If you're sizing up how your current intervention stack holds up against the state-level quality screens coming in 2026-27, we'd be glad to walk through it with you.
Map Your 2026 Tutoring Vendor Against the State Quality Screen