Mentoring and Counseling Interventions
Exposure to gun violence traumatizes children – and this trauma follows them into the classroom. We partner with community-based organizations to identify and evaluate trauma-informed interventions, including mentorship and counseling programs, that surface and strengthen skills in students that help them navigate difficult situations and succeed in school.
While gun violence may affect boys more directly as participants, our research suggests as high as 38% of school-aged girls in Chicago public high schools exhibit signs of PTSD — double the probability of PTSD in service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan- as a result of high rates of trauma exposure, including gun violence.
Youth Guidance’s Working on Womanhood (WOW) program, a group-based peer mentoring program serving school aged girls in Chicago neighborhood schools, reduces PTSD symptoms by 22% in addition to reducing anxiety and depression.
Our evaluation of Youth Guidance’s Becoming a Man (BAM), a school-based group counseling program for young men in 7th-12th grades, found that BAM participants experienced 50% fewer arrests for violent crimes.
Back to Our Future (B2OF)
Back to Our Future (B2OF) is a state-funded, district-led, evidence-informed effort to re-engage disconnected students at an elevated risk for gun violence involvement.
Post-Secondary Champions
The Education Lab partnered with Chicago Public Schools to help implement a program embedding post-secondary advisors in schools to provide personalized supports for students’ post-secondary career and education outcomes.
Communities in Schools (CIS)
The Education Lab partnered with Communities in Schools to evaluate an intervention program of academic and socio-emotional learning supports for students at risk of dropping out of school.
Chicago Student Success Initiative (CSSI)
The Education Lab partnered with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to develop new interventions for schools disproportionately serving students at the highest risk of school dropout or violence involvement.
Scaling Promising Practices in Youth Mentoring
This case study by Results for America highlights the Crime Lab and Education Lab’s role in the City of Chicago’s bold initiative to expand the evidence-based Becoming a Man group mentoring model to serve thousands of young men.
Randomized evaluation of a school-based, trauma-informed group intervention for young women in Chicago
Science Advances journal publication.
Working on Womanhood Research Brief
Research brief for the Working on Womanhood project.
Seizing the Opportunity to Advance Education Equity
2021 Education Lab report on barriers to education faced by CPS students.
Latest Updates
The Case for Doubling Down on Tutoring, a Proven Solution We Can’t Afford to Lose
Accelerate CEO Kevin Huffman and Education Lab executive director Sadie Stockdale Jefferson penned an op-ed that calls for doubling down on investing in tutoring programs as federal aid winds down and academic gaps persist five years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Embedding High-Dosage Tutoring in Secondary Math Classes
MDRC published a blog post highlighting key takeaways from the implementation of a tutoring program in Fulton County, Georgia as a part of our Personalized Learning Initiative, offering a deeper look at the strategies that make tutoring successful and how schools can effectively implement them.
A restorative approach to student discipline shows promise in reducing suspensions and arrests
Suspensions are a common form of official discipline implemented in American schools, but can alternative approaches prove effective in reducing harmful student behavior?
