Clinical trial NCT02673645: Remediating Academic Skill Deficits Among Disadvantaged Youth
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: UNKNOWN
Phase: NA
Conditions: Educational Achievement
Keywords: Educational Achievement
Lead sponsor: University of Chicago
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Northwestern University
name: SAGA Innovations
name: Chicago Public Schools
name: Crown Family Philanthropies
name: Lloyd A. Fry Foundation
name: Paul M. Angell Family Foundation
name: Polk Bros. Foundation
First posted: 2016-02-04
Enrollment: 1848
Sex: ALL
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: PREVENTION

Brief summary: This research aims to continue to study the effectiveness of a promising academic intervention (implemented by SAGA Innovations) that has previously been shown to significantly improve academic outcomes for disadvantaged youth. In addition, this study will begin to investigate the effects of scaling up this promising strategy by exploring variation in tutor effectiveness and the optimal instructor-student and student-student pairings for improving academic outcomes.

Detailed description: The University of Chicago Education Lab research team is carrying out a randomized controlled trial of a promising academic intervention during the 2015-16 academic year in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and SAGA Innovations. Male and female CPS students in grades 9 and 10 will be randomly assigned either to receive what investigators believe to be a best-practice intensive academic support, or to a control group receiving status quo CPS and community services, for one academic year (AY2015-16). The intervention is high-dosage math tutoring provided by SAGA Innovations (previously Match Education of Boston). A previous randomized controlled trial conducted by the University of Chicago research team found that one year of this intervention, delivered in AY2013-14, generated between one and two extra years of academic growth in math, over and above what the normal U.S. high school student learns in one year. The estimated effects for math achievement are on the order of 0.19 to 0.30 SD, depending on the exact test and norming used. The intervention also improved student grades in math, by 0.58 points on a 1-4 grade scale, compared to a control mean of 1.77. These gains are particularly important because math success versus failure is a strong predictor of high school graduation.

This current study aims to replicate the investigators' previous findings, and to that end the research team will again look at the academic, behavioral, and long-term effects of this high-dosage math tutoring program on youth. This study is also designed to explore issues that will be central to efforts to scale-up this promising strategy, including variation in tutor quality and whether there are optimal tutor-student and student-student pairings in terms of gender and race.

The SAGA Innovations program expands on the nationally recognized innovation of high-dosage, in-school-day tutoring developed in Match Education's charter school in Boston. The tutoring program meets as a scheduled course, Math Lab, once a day during the normal school day, and is provided in addition to a student's regular math class. Students taking the course receive an elective credit upon completion. Every student works with the same full-time, professional tutor for the entirety of the school year. The content of the tutoring sessions is aligned with what students are learning in their regular math courses, but is also targeted to address individual gaps in math knowledge. Also following the original model developed by Match Education, SAGA tutors use frequent internal formative assessments of student progress to individualize instruction.

In addition to replicating previous studies that suggest the promise of this high-dosage tutoring model for improving the academic outcomes of at-risk youth, this study also aims to provide insight into the ability of this program to serve youth at a much larger scale. Despite the great need for programs that can affect the national dropout crisis and improve youth outcomes, little is known about how to take promising education interventions to scale. This study will begin to explore whether there is a trade-off between effectiveness and scale by randomly assigning students to pairings and randomly assigning pairings to tutors. Tutors will be separately ranked from highest to lowest quality by SAGA leadership, and by randomly assigning tutors to students, the investigators will be able to explore what effect, if any, tutor quality has on student outcomes. In addition, this study will look at whether gender and race composition of student-tutor pairings and student-student pairings has an effect on outcomes. This work will enable the investigators to begin to learn about variation in tutor effectiveness and the optimal way to match kids to tutors. The research team hopes this work will have important implications for how to scale this promising strategy both within Chicago and beyond.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Low-performing Chicago Public School high schools, chosen in collaboration with the Chicago Public Schools based on criteria such as dropout rate, test scores, scores on academic rating scale, etc.
* School administrators are enthusiastic about the program and agree to terms and conditions of the experimental design
* Male and female youth within these schools who are rising 9th and 10th graders in academic year (AY) 2015-16

Exclusion Criteria:

* Youth who have missed \>60% of days during AY2014-15 (through March), and so would not be expected to show up in school enough during intervention year (AY2015-16) to benefit from school-based programming
* Youth who have failed \>75% of classes during AY2014-15 (through March)
* Youth who have Individualized Education Program (IEP) designations for autism, "educable mentally handicapped," and/or traumatic brain injury

Primary outcomes:
measure: Math achievement
timeFrame: 1-year
measure: Absentee rate
timeFrame: 1-year
measure: Student misconduct
timeFrame: 1-year
measure: Total courses failed
timeFrame: 1-year
measure: Math courses failed
timeFrame: 1-year
measure: Non-math courses failed
timeFrame: 1-year
measure: Math course grades
timeFrame: 1-year
measure: School persistence
timeFrame: 1-year
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Violent crime arrests
timeFrame: 1-year
measure: Other arrests (property, drug, and other crimes)
timeFrame: 1-year
measure: Quarterly earnings data
timeFrame: 1-year
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
affiliation: Northwestern University
name: Jonathan Guryan, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
affiliation: University of Chicago
name: Jens Ludwig, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
affiliation: University of Chicago
name: Kelly Hallberg, PhD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Cook P, Dodge K, Farkas G, Fryer RG, Guryan J, Ludwig J, Mayer S, Pollack H, Steinberg L. Not Too Late: Improving Academic Outcomes for Disadvantaged Youth. Northwestern Institute for Policy Research Working Paper, February 2015.
citation: Cook P, Dodge K, Farkas G, Fryer RG, Guryan J, Ludwig J, Mayer S, Pollack H, Steinberg L. The (Surprising) Efficacy of Academic and Behavioral Intervention with Disadvantaged Youth: Results from a Randomized Experiment in Chicago. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 19862, 2014.
citation: Fryer RG. Injecting Charter School Best Practices into Traditional Public Schools: Evidence from Field Experiments. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 129(3): 1355-1407, 2014.