Teach for America report says tutoring programs can help address teacher shortages
A new study from Teach for America (TFA) and Stanford University’s National Student Support Accelerator found that participation in Ignite — TFA’s tutoring program — sparked interest in applying to its teaching program. The report suggests that these results indicate tutoring could be a scalable solution to address teacher shortages while also diversifying the workforce.
“Using TFA’s application data on tutoring and teacher training programs, we find that Ignite tutoring experience nearly triples the likelihood of applying to the TFA Corps teaching program, with the largest effects among men, students of color, and non-education majors,” the study says.
Through Ignite, tutors provide small-group instruction in elementary reading, middle school math, or SAT prep. Last school year, the program in North Carolina had 282 tutors supporting 285 learning groups in eight schools, offering more than 11,550 hours of additional learning for students, according to a TFA report on the program’s impact in North Carolina.
During the 2025-26 school year, the program is set to expand in North Carolina and beyond.
“Approximately 150 Ignite fellows will tutor nearly 300 North Carolina students this fall — making it one of the largest TFA Ignite programs in the country,” said Mercedes Blue, senior managing director of communications and public affairs at TFA.
Nationally, the program’s 4,300 tutors will reach 7,000 students in 160 schools this school year. TFA aims to grow Ignite to 10,000 fellows annually by 2030.
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Since the Ignite program began in North Carolina in 2022 — the first state in the Southeast to offer the program — 528 fellows have tutored 535 learning groups, with each learning group consisting of 1-4 students, Blue said.
Nationally, seventh and eighth grade math students saw 1.5 to 2.5 times their expected growth on average each semester on diagnostic assessments taken after tutoring. Fifth grade reading students experienced 2 to 3 times their expected growth on average this spring on assessments, according to a TFA overview of the program.
In North Carolina, TFA says 95% of schools with Ignite fellows report positive impact on students’ academic growth and 96% of students said they had a positive relationship with their tutor.
“High‑dosage tutoring is one of the most effective ways to close learning gaps and accelerate growth, and we are excited to bring Ignite to Sampson County students this fall,” said Sampson County Schools Superintendent Dr. Jamie King.
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The TFA and Stanford study on the tutor-to-teacher pipeline used data from 6,000 applicants in seven cycles of the TFA Ignite Fellowship between 2021-24.
The study sought to discover if tutoring with TFA increased participants’ interest in applying to the TFA Corps teacher program — the nonprofit’s program that places recent college graduates as teachers in underserved schools for two years — and how these effects differed among underrepresented groups in the teacher workforce.
According to the study, college students who participated in the TFA Ignite tutoring fellowship were 12 percentage points more likely than their peers to apply to TFA’s teaching program — 19% among tutors compared to 6.7% among their peers.
The study found that these effects were even more pronounced among underrepresented groups in education. Tutoring increased applications among men by 22 points, which was more than double the effect’s size for women. Students of color also saw gains of 19 points — including 35 points for Hispanic students and 28 points for Black students at non-HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities).
College students outside of education fields who tutored were also 14 percentage points more likely to apply to the teaching program than non-tutors.
The study says tutoring programs could serve as potential teacher recruitment tools moving forward. Such tools are especially important given the nation’s 400,000 positions for teachers left vacant or filled by uncertified staff, the report says. “There is a growing mismatch between the increasingly diverse U.S. student population and a teaching workforce that has not kept pace demographically,” the report says.
More than half of public school students are students of color, but less than 22% of teachers are people of color, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Additionally, 40% of schools do not have any educators of color.
The TFA study says policymakers and practitioners should build intentional tutor-to-teacher pipelines, target tutoring recruitment to underrepresented groups in the teacher workforce, and use tutoring as a career exploration tool.
“Tutoring programs may serve not only as interventions to boost student learning but also as potential workforce recruitment tools,” the report says. “This dual role has several important implications for policy and practice.”