ERIC Number: ED579210
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2017-Apr
Pages: 150
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Two Years of Case Management: Final Findings from the Communities in Schools Random Assignment Evaluation
Parise, Leigh M.; Corrin, William; Granito, Kelly; Haider, Zeest; Somers, Marie-Andrée; Cerna, Oscar
MDRC
While high school graduation rates are on the rise nationwide, too many students still never reach that milestone, with 7,000 on average dropping out every day. Recognizing that many students need additional support to succeed in school, Communities In Schools (CIS) works to provide and connect students with integrated support services to keep them on a path to graduation. CIS makes some services broadly available to all students at a school, and provides individual case management to those deemed most at risk of dropping out. This report presents the final implementation and impact findings from a two-year randomized controlled trial of CIS case management. This trial is half of a two-pronged national evaluation, the other half being a quasi-experimental study of the whole-school model. The report describes the implementation and effects of CIS case management in 24 mostly urban, low-income secondary schools in two states during the 2013-2014 school year. The study found that CIS case management services succeeded in getting targeted students into more support activities and improving several of their nonacademic outcomes. However, findings also showed that these services did not have a positive effect on students' attendance, academic performance, or behavior after two years. The study also estimated the effect of case management on students' nonacademic and more traditional school outcomes. The final chapter of this report includes implications for practice based on the evaluation findings. The report concludes by considering the results of this random assignment study of case management together with the results of the quasi-experimental analysis of the whole-school model. Taken together, the results suggest that whole-school models of integrated student support offer the promise of positive effects. The results also indicate, however, some areas to which support providers may need to pay close attention, to ensure that students receive services that address their specific needs and that benefit them above and beyond the services already available.
Descriptors: Caseworker Approach, Randomized Controlled Trials, Academic Support Services, Student Personnel Services, At Risk Students, Potential Dropouts, Dropout Prevention, Program Implementation, Quasiexperimental Design, Urban Schools, Low Income Students, Secondary School Students, Program Effectiveness, Attendance Patterns, Academic Achievement, Student Behavior, Program Evaluation, Outcomes of Education, Graduation Rate, Dropout Rate, Institutional Characteristics, Regression (Statistics), Statistical Analysis
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Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), Social Innovation Fund (SIF)
Authoring Institution: MDRC
Identifiers - Location: Texas; North Carolina
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A