Informative Testing—a Practical Approach for Tutoring With Groups

Most educators would agree that the ideal learning situation would be one in which each student had his or her own personal instructor. In fact, achievement test scores of the average student in a one-to-one tutoring situation are typically about two standard deviations higher than the average student in a conventional class with an instructor and 30 or so students (see Bloom, 1984 for a review of the relevant empirical research). In other words, the average student who is exposed to the feedback and individualized corrective instruction thczt is characteristic of a one-to-one tutor situation is likely to outperJforrn 98 percent of the students in conventional classes. These findings suggest two important conclusions: (1) the