Age range

Website: www.denversummerbridge.org

Mission/Goals: Creating paths to college for motivated low income middle school students and promoting careers in education for talented high school and college students.

Sources:

www.denversummerbridge.org

Type of Evaluation: Outcomes Monitoring.

Summary of Available Evaluation Information: Denver Summerbridge helps low-income middle schoolers push themselves to have high expectations, both personally and academically, with a particular focus on students reaching college. Summerbridge is a year-round “students teaching students” program that hires talented high school and college students considering careers in education to teach talented inner-city middle school students. Students were pre- and post-tested with subtests of the Woodcock Johnson Achievement Battery III and the Degrees of Reading test during the summer 2004 program. Overall, students showed statistically significant gains from pre-testing to post-testing in reading comprehension and fluency, capitalization and punctuation and writing fluency, and math fluency. Statistically significant gains were not seen overall on the writing sentences and math calculations subtests. Additionally, a recent comparison of Summerbridge students’ scores on the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) with those from other students at partner DPS middle schools found that more than three times as many Summerbridge students scored proficient/advanced in writing; more than twice as many in reading and math; and more than 1½ times as many in science. A more rigorous evaluation of the program is not currently available.