As a tutor at Eugene Field Elementary School in Rogers Park on the North Side, Jacob Wilcox spent the last year listening to a small group of students read sentences out loud to figure out where they were struggling and build confidence.
“You see so much growth from students when they have that one-on-one support,” he said. Wilcox said many of his mostly low-income, often multilingual students never had an opportunity for tutoring until he arrived.
But this type of individualized support for literacy is vanishing from Chicago Public Schools next year. Wilcox and 530 other tutors got layoff notices this week. Their last day will be May 30.
The hiring of hundreds of tutors was one of CPS’ key strategies to shore up learning as students returned to in-person classes after the COVID-19 pandemic. And when elementary school reading scores rebounded, leaders credited the tutors in part for the improvements.
CPS said in a statement Friday that it’s “refining and refocusing the program in response to key lessons learned and in alignment with current district resources.” This year, 200-plus schools had literacy and math tutors, but next year only 55 will get math tutors for middle school students, according to CPS.
CPS is facing a budget deficit of at least $529 million. Also, soon-to-be-released research suggests that the expanded CPS tutor program was not as effective as prior studies suggested tutoring could be.
CPS officials noted that they were planning to continue other supports put in place post-pandemic, such as providing some schools with extra teachers called interventionists.
But the layoffs bring to an end one of the biggest tutoring efforts in the country. At the onset, district leaders set out to use $25 million in federal COVID-19 relief money to hire as many 800 tutors.
Jacob Wilcox, a fifth-grade tutor at Eugene Field Elementary School, walks to the Lunt Red Line station after a day of work at the Rogers Park school on Friday. Wilcox said many of his mostly low-income, often multilingual students never had an opportunity for tutoring until he arrived.
Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times
After a launch in 2021, CPS eventually had hundreds of tutors, and they were stationed in most schools. Since then, it has targeted resources in the schools whose students needed the most support. In 2025, the budget was $10 million.
But there’s a lot of variation among schools in how they are using tutors, said Monica Bhatt, senior research director for the University of Chicago Education Lab. Some students had sessions several times a week, while others averaged once a week or even less.
Bhatt said tutoring could be a “very effective accelerant” for student learning when it’s implemented well. The key is getting a high enough dosage of tutoring to realize those big gains for students and families, she said.
Scaling down the program next year is one way to make sure students get the most benefit, Bhatt said.
Tutors at some elementary schools said they saw amazing results. Lisabeth Weiner, who tutored at Reilly Elementary since 2021, said she had one little girl who came to her unable to read at all.
“Suddenly two years later, she was reading,” Weiner said. “Her fluency was unbelievable. She was able to read whole passages, maybe hitting 160 words a minute. It was miraculous.”
Weiner points out that if students struggle in reading they will have trouble in other subjects.
Wilcox and Weiner also are questioning why tutors weren’t kept on until the end of the school year, which is June 12. Weiner said she suspected the tutoring program would be in trouble, given the district’s budget deficit, but she planned lessons and activities until the last day.
CPS officials did not say why they were laying the tutors off two weeks before the last day. But they said the district is “deeply grateful for their service and commitment to Chicago’s young people” and that they are committed to helping them with this transition.
Sarah Karp covers education for WBEZ. Follow her on X @WBEZeducation and @sskedreporter.