Boys and Girls Club Project Learn (OJJDP Model Program Guide)

Office of Justice Programs, Innovation - Partnerships – Safer Neighborhoods

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Serving Children, Families and Communities

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Boys and Girls Club Project Learn

Intervention:

Project Learn is a non-school program of the Boys & Girls Club (BGC) that aims to enhance educational performance of economically disadvantaged adolescents through the provision of out-of-school educational enrichment activities. The program strives to increase students’ interest in education and their scholastic abilities to improve their school grades. The objective is to offset the gamut of problems associated with low educational achievement, including difficult behavior and limited employment opportunities.

The program targets economically disadvantaged young adolescents from public housing. It aims to increase effectiveness of out-of-school educational activities by targeting neighborhoods and youth who are most at risk and most in need of resources. Participating youth are typically between 10 and 14 years of age.

The educational enhancement program takes place in the BGC facilities or an outside setting, depending on the activity, and students are engaged in a structured program. The Project Learn weekly curriculum includes:

4 to 5 hours of discussion with knowledgeable adults
1 to 2 hours of creative writing
4 to 5 hours of leisure reading
5 to 6 hours of school homework completion
2 to 3 hours helping other youth with homework, projects, and skills acquisition
4 to 5 hours of games and recreation that draw on cognitive and transferable skills

Participating youth receive incentives for attendance, including field trips, school supplies, additional computer time, and special privileges at their BGC. Additionally, participating youths’ parents are encouraged to join certain activities, particularly homework completion and reading sessions.

The program requires BGC staff assisted by parents and other volunteers delivering the Project Learn curriculum to be trained by BGC professionals from their national headquarters. The training is delivered in a 1-day workshop. A local BGC staff member acts as the Education Enhancement Coordinator and is assisted by other BGC staff, school representatives, parent leaders, and housing authority and resident council representatives.

Project Learn aims to offer additional educational activities and resources, as well as enrichment activities, not otherwise available to low-income families in order to increase positive scholastic performance. The program suggests that by offering such activities, youth can overcome the educational adversities they face in many overwhelmed inner-city schools throughout the United States, and that out-of-school programs targeting at-risk youth have increased educational potential.

Evaluation Methodology:

Study 1
The Schinke et al. (2000) study evaluated the effects of Project Learn on youth in public housing in New York City, N.Y., Cleveland, Ohio, Oakland, Calif., Tampa, Fla., and Edinburgh, Texas. This program was implemented by Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGC) in communities they already served. For the purpose of the evaluation, a site in each city that had BGC, but not the Project Learn enhancement, was matched on demographics, youth proportion, size, and public housing service population of the Treatment sites to serve as the Comparison site. Additionally, a Control site was matched to each Treatment site using a youth facility that was not BGC and did not provide educational enhancements to their adolescent students. In total, 15 sites were used (five Treatment, five Comparison, and five Control), matched on geographic and demographic variables. Youth and parents at each site completed informed consent statements. The total number of participants at baseline was 283. At the 18-month follow-up, the number of participants had decreased to 249, and to 191 by the final 30-month follow-up. An attrition analysis showed participant drop-off did not differ significantly between intervention groups and sites.

Of the 283 youth across the 15 sites at baseline, the average age was 12.3 years. Forty percent were female. The participant group was 63 percent black, 19 percent Hispanic, 13 percent white, and 5 percent Asian or of another ethnicity. There were no significant differences in age, gender, or ethnicity between groups. Although treatment and comparison youth came from BGCs, control youth were regular users of their facilities, which included after-school, recreational, and human services programs. Treatment sites were encouraged to participate in the evaluation when chosen; comparison sites were motivated by the receipt of the program after the evaluation; and control sites received a financial incentive at each measurement.

Data from schools were collected to assess students’ performance in mathematics, English grammar, composition, reading, spelling, history, science, social studies, and geography. Schools also provided attendance records and behavioral incidents. Researchers used analysis of variance to test for differences between the treatment, comparison, and control groups.

Evaluation Outcome:

Study 1
School Grades
At every follow-up, average grades of treatment youth were significantly higher than control and comparison group youth. At the 30-month follow-up the treatment group’s average score was 86.88, compared to 78.79 for the comparison group and 75.67 for the control group. It should be noted that at baseline assessment, treatment and comparison group children already had significantly higher grades than control youth.

At the 30-month follow-up, the treatment group had significantly higher grades than both the comparison and control groups in the following areas: reading, spelling, history, science, and social studies. Although there were no differences at the 30-month follow-up in English and writing, the treatment group had significantly higher grades at the 18-month follow-up. In mathematics, the treatment group had significantly higher grades than the comparison and control groups at the 18-month follow-up; however, at the 30-month follow-up, the treatment and comparison groups did not differ from each other. They did, however, have significantly higher grades than the control group. There were no significant differences in geography grades between the groups at any follow-up.

School Attendance
At the 30-month follow-up, the treatment group had significantly fewer days missed (2.19 days) compared to the comparison group (12.33 days) and control group (16.67 days).

Behavioral Incidents
There were no significant differences between the groups at any follow-up point in the frequency of behavioral incidents.

Other Information:

Implementation Information: For more information about the program, please see the Boys and Girls Club of America Web site.

References:

Schinke, Steven P., Kristin C. Cole, and Stephen R. Poulin. 2000. “Enhancing the Educational Achievement of At-Risk Youth.” Prevention Science 1(1):51–60.

Program Specification:

New Rating:

Promising

Re-reviewed Date:

July 2012

Program Type:

Academic Skills Enhancement

Truancy Prevention

Ethnicity:

Asian

African American

Hispanic or Latino (of any race)

White

Other Ethnicity

Gender:

Both

Age:

10 - 14

Special Populations:

Females

Target Settings:

Urban

Problem Behaviors:

Academic Problems

Risk & Protective Factors:

Risk

School

Dropping out of school

Low academic achievement

Negative attitude toward school / Low bonding / Low school attachment / Commitment to school

Protective

Family

Effective parenting

Individual

Religiosity / Involvement in organized religious activities

Social competencies and problem solving skills

School

Opportunities for prosocial school involvement

Additional Information:

NIJ: What Works

Status:

Program is in operation at this time.

Performance Measures:

Suggested OJJDP Performance Measures for the Program Types(s):

Delinquency Prevention
Academic Skills Enhancement
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF
School Programs
Academic Skills Enhancement
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF
School Programs
Truancy Prevention
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF

Contact Information:

Program Developer:
Steven Schinke
D’Elbert and Selma Keenan Professor Columbia University School of Social Work
1255 Amsterdam Avenue
New York , NY 10027
Phone: 212.851.2276
Email: Click Here

National Headquarters
Boys and Girls Clubs of America
1275 Peachtree Street NE
Atlanta, GA 30309
Phone: 404.487.5700
Email: Click Here
Website: Click Here