Age range

Website: www.citizenschools.org

Mission/Goals: The goal is to prepare students for leadership roles in the 21st century. To achieve this goal, Citizen Schools has identified four important objectives for students' success: strengthen academic skills, develop personal leadership skills, facilitate access to resources, and build community connections.

Source(s): www.guidestar.org; www.citizenschools.org; www.policystudies.com

Notes: Citizen Schools runs after-school and summer programs. The after-school program runs in both the fall and spring for 12 week sessions and the summer program runs for 6 weeks. Citizen Schools learning model includes: Apprenticeships, Explorations, Homework Investment Time, and Team-building activities. Citizen Schools focuses on skill development, particularly in the areas of writing, data analysis, and oral communication and is linked closely to school activities and learning standards. Children apprentice with lawyers, web designers, and architects, culminating their learning apprenticeships by arguing trials before federal judges, designing web sites for their school, organizing public events, and publishing newspapers.

Type of evaluation: Quasi-experimental.

Objective: To assess the effect of Citizen Schools on its students.

Impact/Outcomes: To date, data are available for the first two years of the study. On measures of psychosocial skills and wellbeing, both cohorts of CS participants remained stable from baseline to spring reporting very positive feelings about their future; Positive results were also reported on measures of self-efficacy, their perceived ability to control their futures, and their competencies in social interactions. Students reported the biggest increase in scores on self-confidence in oral presentation. On educational outcomes, reports show that CS 8th Grade Academy graduates in both cohorts selected better high schools than non-participants. CS graduates were also found to advance to 10th grade significantly more than non-participants. Among 6th graders, CS participants outperformed non-participants on 3 of the 6 educational indicators; however, as program exposure increased, CS outperformed non-participants on 5 out of 6 indicators. Students in the 8th Grade Academy showed mixed results on educational indicators such as grades, MCAS scores and suspension rates. Follow up data in the 7th and 9th grades show mixed results. Seventh graders outperformed non-participants on 3 of 6 educational indicators, while 9th graders did not significantly outperform their non-CS counterparts.