DOI: 10.3886/icpsr38966.v1
title: Evaluation of City Year's Whole School Whole Child Model in Five Urban School Districts, United States, 2007-2019
title: Version 1

description: City Year is an education and human development organization that partners with schools nationwide to support student success and address the root causes of inequitable educational outcomes. Every year, City Year recruits a diverse group of AmeriCorps members, ages 18-25, to deliver its holistic Whole School Whole Child (WSWC) model. The corps members commit to serving as "Student Success Coaches" in schools full time for one school year. During that time, they provide universal holistic services to all students (Tier 1 services), as well as targeted academic, social and emotional, behavior, and attendance services to students at increased risk of not graduating based on early warning indicators (Tier 2 services).
In 2017, the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and MDRC began a five-year evaluation of WSWC services in 22 middle schools in five large, urban school districts. The evaluation includes two impact studies. The first study explored the implementation and effects of the entire WSWC model (Tier 1 and Tier 2 services) for all students, using a quasi-experimental study design ("Whole School Study"). The second study attempted to isolate the effect of Tier 2 services for students who were identified as being at heightened risk of dropping out of school, using a student-level randomized experiment ("Tier 2 Study").
This data collection features data from the first study.
description: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of City Year's Whole School Whole Child model on student outcomes in five urban school districts in the United States.
description: The study looks at trends over time for two groups of middle schools--a group of school that implemented the WSWC model (schools partnering with City Year, referred to as "City Year schools") and a group that did not implement the model but that may have been offering other student supports (comparison schools). Time trends are based on the outcomes of consecutive cohorts of sixth-grade students enrolled in the two groups of schools in the school years before the WSWC model was implemented ("pre-intervention cohorts") and in the school years during the model's implementation ("intervention cohorts"). Based on these trends, the study examined by how much the outcomes of students in the intervention cohorts "deviated" from the pre-intervention trend for their school ("deviation from trend").
description: Variables in this study include descriptive statistics for student outcomes and characteristics. The main student outcomes measured were suspensions, expulsions, absenteeism, and standardized test scores in English Language Arts (ELA) and math.
description: The datafile includes a school-level weight variable. This variable was used in the analysis to account for the fact that some treatment schools were matched to 2 comparison schools while others have 1 comparison school. The weight variable equalizes the weighted Treatment:Comparison school ratio so that it is the same (1:1) in each matching block. Specifically, the value of the weight variable is equal to 1 for all City Year schools. When there is only 1 comparison school in a matching block, the weight variable is equal to 1 for that comparison school. When there are 2 comparison schools in a matching block, the weight variable is equal to 0.5 for each comparison school in that block.
description: Response Rates: The data source for this study are student records (administrative data). 99 percent of students in the study sample have records in the first follow-up year (6th grade), and 90 percent of students have records data in the second follow-up year (7th grade). Response rates are lower in the second follow-up year due to student mobility out of the school districts.
description: The sample included 22 treatment schools in 5 urban school districts in the US that implemented the intervention. The districts were selected purposefully because (1) some of their schools were using the intervention; (2) they had enough middle schools NOT using the intervention to create a comparison group, and (3) they agreed to participate in the study. The sample also included 29 matched comparison schools in the same five school districts. Each treatment school was matched to the two non-City Year schools in the same district that had the most similar student outcomes in the school year prior to the intervention's implementation.
At the student level, the sample for the study included consecutive cohorts of sixth-grade students enrolled in the study schools. A sixth-grade cohort is defined as a group of students who enter a school in the same school year. (For example, a student is a member of the 2013-14 cohort if they enrolled in 6th grade for the first time in the 2013-14 school year.) Up to eight cohorts of students were included from each study school: the last four cohorts to enroll at the school in the school years preceding WSWC implementation (four pre-intervention cohorts) and the first four cohorts to enroll after the start of implementation (four intervention cohorts). The student cohorts of a comparison school are the same as the City Year school to which it is matched. The outcomes of students in each cohort were measured for two follow-up years: the first follow-up year (6th grade) and the second follow-up year (7th grade for most students).
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Evaluation of City Year's Whole School Whole Child Model in Five Urban School Districts, United States, 2007-2019
description: Cohorts of sixth-grade students enrolled in the study schools during the study time period. Smallest Geographic Unit: None