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Date: November 25, 2024 Mon

Time: 9:12 pm

Results for youth-at-risk

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Author: Cook, Philip J.

Title: The (Surprising) Efficacy of Academic and Behavioral Intervention with Disadvantaged Youth: Results from a Randomized Experiment in Chicago

Summary: There is growing concern that improving the academic skills of disadvantaged youth is too difficult and costly, so policymakers should instead focus either on vocationally oriented instruction for teens or else on early childhood education. Yet this conclusion may be premature given that so few previous interventions have targeted a potential fundamental barrier to school success: "mismatch" between what schools deliver and the needs of disadvantaged youth who have fallen behind in their academic or non-academic development. This paper reports on a randomized controlled trial of a two-pronged intervention that provides disadvantaged youth with non-academic supports that try to teach youth social-cognitive skills based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and intensive individualized academic remediation. The study sample consists of 106 male 9th and 10th graders in a public high school on the south side of Chicago, of whom 95% are black and 99% are free or reduced price lunch eligible. Participation increased math test scores by 0.65 of a control group standard deviation (SD) and 0.48 SD in the national distribution, increased math grades by 0.67 SD, and seems to have increased expected graduation rates by 14 percentage points (46%). While some questions remain about the intervention, given these effects and a cost per participant of around $4,400 (with a range of $3,000 to $6,000), this intervention seems to yield larger gains in adolescent outcomes per dollar spent than many other intervention strategies.

Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014. 59p.

Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper Series; Working Paper 19862: Accessed January 27, 2014 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19862.pdf?new_window=1

Year: 2014

Country: United States

URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19862.pdf?new_window=1

Shelf Number: 131801

Keywords:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Delinquency Prevention
Disadvantaged Youth
Education
Intervention Programs
Youth-At-Risk