The tutoring company Paper, Inc., says that its approach of outsourced, on-demand tutoring is the only reasonable option for districts to get adequate support to students.
But the company’s service has drawn criticism recently, including a report in Chalkbeat this week that found results lacking in many schools that use it. And a recent study of student’s use of Paper’s on-demand service at a charter school network in California showed that only 19 percent of students ever used it.
Even so, with schools around the country struggling to make up for the learning loss caused by the pandemic and suffering from teacher shortages, business is booming—including multi-million contracts with school districts across the country, and revenues projected to be somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion.
Some of the company’s skeptics see the situation as an example of the education system’s failure to pressure the edtech industry to make sure their products actually improve learning.
Paper’s leadership, however, argues that critics aren’t taking student perspectives into account.
Specifically, Paper’s CEO Philip Cutler says that the actual tutoring it offers is effective, and that even the studies coming out don’t dispute that. “In the study, I think the biggest thing is, it's an awareness challenge,” Cutler told EdSurge this week. According to Cutler, on-demand tutoring is what students want, and it works within the district constraints districts have—like staffing shortages. “We're the only ones that can do this at scale,” he argues.
Paper certainly isn’t the only tutoring company to say that on-demand services are valuable. But the differences between on-demand tutoring and other approaches, like high-dose tutoring, aren’t always clear, and that can confuse districts.
Relying solely on on-demand services can give districts a false sense that they’ve solved the problem, according to Anthony Salcito, who leads Varsity Tutors for Schools, which offers a similar on-demand tutoring service as Paper.
The whole tutoring industry needs to do a better job helping its customers understand the different models, Salcito says. For instance, he says some on-demand services are missing the ability to build relationships between students and tutors. He calls an on-demand offering “a nice complementary solution,” but one that isn’t a complete answer.