TY - JOUR
T1 - Short-Term Impact of Experience Corps® Participation on Children and Schools
T2 - Results from a Pilot Randomized Trial
AU - Rebok, George W.
AU - Carlson, Michelle C.
AU - Glass, Thomas A
AU - McGill, Sylvia
AU - Hill, Joel
AU - Wasik, Barbara A.
AU - Ialongo, Nicholas
AU - Frick, Kevin D.
AU - Fried, Linda P.
AU - Rasmussen, Meghan D.
N1 - Funding Information:
Library Support This program (developed by Sylvia McGill) supports library functions (from shelving or cataloguing books, to reopening and helping staff school libraries, to helping children pick books they will enjoy, to reading to/with children) under the guidance of a librarian. With the aid of this module, Experience Corps has been instrumental in reopening and helping to operate several of the schools’ libraries after a 5-year closure.
Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by funding from the following sources: the Retirement Research Foundation, the Erickson Foundation, the state of Maryland, the state of Maryland Department of Education, the Baltimore City Public Schools, the Baltimore City Commission on Aging and Retirement Education, the Johns Hopkins Prevention Center, and the Corporation for National Service. We would like to thank the teachers and principals of the six participating schools for their cooperation in conducting the evaluations. We would also like to thank Dr. Qian-Li Xue for his assistance with the data analysis.
PY - 2004/3
Y1 - 2004/3
N2 - This article reports on the short-term impact of a school-based program using older adult volunteers and aimed at improved academic achievement and reduced disruptive classroom behavior in urban elementary school students. The Experience Corps® Baltimore (Maryland) program places a critical mass of older adult volunteers, serving 15 hours or more per week, in public schools to perform meaningful and important roles to improve the educational outcomes of children and the health and well-being of the volunteers. This article reports on the preliminary impact of the program on children in grades K-3. A total of 1,194 children in grades K-3 from six urban elementary schools participated in this pilot trial. At follow-up, third grade children whose schools were randomly selected for the program bad significantly higher scores on a standardized reading test than children in the control schools, and there was a nonsignificant trend for improvement in alphabet recognition and vocabulary ability among kindergarten children in the program. Office referrals for classroom misbehavior decreased by about half in the Experience Corps schools, but remained the same in the control schools. Teachers bad somewhat more favorable attitudes toward senior volunteers as a result of having older volunteers in the classroom, although the difference between the intervention and control schools was not statistically significant. In this pilot trial, the Experience Corps program led to selective improvements in student reading/academic achievement and classroom behavior while not burdening the school staff.
AB - This article reports on the short-term impact of a school-based program using older adult volunteers and aimed at improved academic achievement and reduced disruptive classroom behavior in urban elementary school students. The Experience Corps® Baltimore (Maryland) program places a critical mass of older adult volunteers, serving 15 hours or more per week, in public schools to perform meaningful and important roles to improve the educational outcomes of children and the health and well-being of the volunteers. This article reports on the preliminary impact of the program on children in grades K-3. A total of 1,194 children in grades K-3 from six urban elementary schools participated in this pilot trial. At follow-up, third grade children whose schools were randomly selected for the program bad significantly higher scores on a standardized reading test than children in the control schools, and there was a nonsignificant trend for improvement in alphabet recognition and vocabulary ability among kindergarten children in the program. Office referrals for classroom misbehavior decreased by about half in the Experience Corps schools, but remained the same in the control schools. Teachers bad somewhat more favorable attitudes toward senior volunteers as a result of having older volunteers in the classroom, although the difference between the intervention and control schools was not statistically significant. In this pilot trial, the Experience Corps program led to selective improvements in student reading/academic achievement and classroom behavior while not burdening the school staff.
KW - Academic achievement
KW - Childhood education
KW - Classroom behavior
KW - Literacy development
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U2 - 10.1093/jurban/jth095
DO - 10.1093/jurban/jth095
M3 - Article
C2 - 15047787
AN - SCOPUS:2442482602
SN - 1099-3460
VL - 81
SP - 79
EP - 93
JO - Journal of Urban Health
JF - Journal of Urban Health
IS - 1
ER -