STRIVE - Boys & Girls Club

The Issue

The pandemic exacerbated already high achievement gaps in K-12 education. Students across the country were pulled from the classroom, but returned to very different situations at home. Some students had parents who didn’t work much, or were able to work from home, that can help them parse through their math and reading assignments. Others, though, had parents who were emergency workers or were otherwise unable to work from home. Those students had far fewer resources during a vital year of education, and they returned to in-person instruction even further behind their peers.

There is a growing body of literature suggesting that the movement away from in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year reduced student achievement, worsened children’s mental health, and decreased school enrollment. And research suggests that students in high-poverty districts lost more ground than higher-income ones during the pandemic.

For 50 years, the Boys & Girls Club has provided after school programming for youth in need. Youth development professionals at the Club have witnessed the strain of the pandemic on already underserved students. During the 2021-22 school year, 84.22% of club members were one or more grade levels behind in literacy. 92.5% of club members were behind in math. As they interact with club members nearly every day, they also witness the mental health crisis that burdens students.

Prior studies demonstrate the effectiveness of comprehensive youth programs. But the Boys & Girls Club wants to offer a unique model, where academics are combined with emotional wellbeing in the lesson plan. To completely address the achievement gap and the devastating impacts of the pandemic on that gap, we need to understand how to best offer support to our students after the school day is over.

 

The Intervention

Across club locations in St. Joseph County, Boys & Girls Club offers academic support and enrichment for students who might not otherwise have a place to go after school. They aim to provide students with the tools they need to excel academically and the emotional regulation tools they need to thrive in life.

Specifically, their STRIVE program builds upon the typical after-school club experience, combining STEM, literacy, and social-emotional learning components into a single program. This study will examine the effectiveness of targeted academic enrichment as well as the combination of targeted academic enrichment and social-emotional learning.

 

Research Question

Does participation in the STRIVE program impact academic outcomes including grades, standardized test scores, and school attendance as well as behavioral outcomes measured through incident reports and teacher-reported behavior?

 

Intended Outcomes

• Students who participate in academic enrichment programming will demonstrate academic improvement, including higher homework completion rates, school attendance and improvement in standardized test scores.
• Students who participate in emotional well-being programming will have better behavioral outcomes as reported by their teachers.

 

Research Study Design

The BGCNIC project is a randomized control trial. The research team will randomly split participants into three groups. The first group will receive the STRIVE program, which includes standard club programing plus the academic enrichent and emotional well-being components. The second group will receive standard club programming plus the academic enrichment component. And the third group will serve as the control group and receive standard club programming without the additional components. 

LEO researchers will use data from local school districts to measure grades, standardized test scores and school attendance. They will also measure behavioral outcomes through the administration of a strengths and difficulties questionnaire (SDQ) to the teachers of study participants.

 

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