Infographic

Impacts of a Virtual Tutoring Model to Support Elementary Math Skills

April 2026

Youth Policy Lab explored the research question: What is the impact of access to Cignition's virtual small-group math tutoring on math achievement for upper elementary students?

Infographic of Cignition study describing the background, Cignition model, study design, and key findings

Key findings

  • Being assigned to Cignition tutoring has a small positive (but not statistically significant) effect on math performance.
  • Only 27% of the treatment group met the program attendance goal with at least 50 hours of tutoring received; the overall average dosage was 35.9 hours.
  • However, in one site (N=31) that had 93% of students reach 50 hours, being assigned to Cignition had a statistically significant positive impact (effect size of 0.49 standard deviations).
  • Treatment students received ~35 more minutes of total math instruction per week than the control students, but received less dedicated time from teachers at their school.