Mentoring and Counseling Interventions
Exposure to gun violence traumatizes children – and this trauma follows them into the classroom. We partner with community-based organizations to identify and evaluate trauma-informed interventions, including mentorship and counseling programs, that surface and strengthen skills in students that help them navigate difficult situations and succeed in school.
While gun violence may affect boys more directly as participants, our research suggests as high as 38% of school-aged girls in Chicago public high schools exhibit signs of PTSD — double the probability of PTSD in service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan- as a result of high rates of trauma exposure, including gun violence.
Youth Guidance’s Working on Womanhood (WOW) program, a group-based peer mentoring program serving school aged girls in Chicago neighborhood schools, reduces PTSD symptoms by 22% in addition to reducing anxiety and depression.
Our evaluation of Youth Guidance’s Becoming a Man (BAM), a school-based group counseling program for young men in 7th-12th grades, found that BAM participants experienced 50% fewer arrests for violent crimes.
Back to Our Future (B2OF)
Back to Our Future (B2OF) is an effort to re-engage disconnected youth and connect them back to Chicago Public Schools (CPS) or other education completion opportunities.
Protected: Post-Secondary Champions
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Communities in Schools (CIS)
The Education Lab partnered with Communities in Schools to evaluate an intervention program of academic and socio-emotional learning supports for students at risk of dropping out of school.
Chicago Student Success Initiative (CSSI)
The Education Lab partnered with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to develop new interventions for schools disproportionately serving students at the highest risk of school dropout or violence involvement.
Scaling Promising Practices in Youth Mentoring
This case study by Results for America highlights the Crime Lab and Education Lab’s role in the City of Chicago’s bold initiative to expand the evidence-based Becoming a Man group mentoring model to serve thousands of young men.
Randomized evaluation of a school-based, trauma-informed group intervention for young women in Chicago
Science Advances journal publication.
Working on Womanhood- Research Brief
Research brief for the Working on Womanhood project.
Seizing the Opportunity to Advance Education Equity
2021 Education Lab report on barriers to education faced by CPS students.
Latest Updates
Help Wanted: Strategies to Recruit a Tutoring Workforce on a Large Scale
MDRC’s Rebecca Davis explores effective strategies for recruiting a tutoring workforce at scale, an essential component of the Personalized Learning Initiative, and advancing educational outcomes through targeted recruitment efforts.
Here’s one roadmap to easing the mental health crisis in teen girls
Education Lab Senior Research Director Monica Bhatt and Youth Guidance Chief Program Officer Nacole Milbrook wrote an op-ed featured in the Chicago Sun-Times on the Working on Womanhood program and their partnership with the city and Chicago Public Schools to systematically provide school-based counseling services to 750 girls.
AbbVie spends $350M to bolster healthcare, education; ‘We look forward to the impact we will make in the decades to come’
Lake County News-Sun’s Steve Sadin highlights AbbVie’s philanthropy including commitments to the University of Chicago Education Lab’s research helping urban youth, “in high schools and beyond.”
