Impact Evaluation of a School-Based Violence Prevention Program

Contractors: RTI International; Pacific Institute for Research (PIRE); Tanglewood Research, Inc.

Background/Research Questions:

The Safe and Drug-Free and Communities Act (SDFSCA, Title IV-A) administers grants to states that are intended to prevent students’ use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit substances as well as to prevent violence in and around schools. The total for the SDFSCA state grants in FY09 was $294,759,000.

Curriculum-based violence prevention programs have been widely implemented in schools but research finds that their effects are small and short-lived. Whole-school violence-prevention strategies, which aim to increase the clarity, fairness, and consistency of school disciplinary policies, have been promoted by experts in the field but have not been widely used or rigorously tested. This study combines a curriculum and a whole-school strategy to test a comprehensive approach to violence prevention. The study addresses the following questions:

• What is the impact of the program on the level of student aggressive and violent behaviors in schools that implement the combined violence-prevention program compared to the schools that do not implement the program?
• Is there a difference in the level of aggressive and violent behaviors for high-risk students in schools that implement the combined violence-prevention program compared to high-risk students in schools that do not implement the program.

Design:

Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP), the curriculum component, consists of 16 one-hour lessons delivered at each grade level. Best Behavior, the whole-school component, creates clear schools rules and helps personnel consistently enforce them. Forty middle schools were recruited for the evaluation with half of them randomly assigned to receive the violence-prevention program. School violence and student aggression is being measured through student and teacher surveys. The quality of program implementation is being measured in treatment schools through interviews with school administrators and teachers, and through on-site observations.

Cost/Duration: $9,800,000 over 6 years, 3 months (August 2004 – May 2011)

Current Status:

The final report with findings after three years of program implementation was released in May, 2011 (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20114017/index.asp).

Key Findings:

:

• There were no statistically significant differences between intervention and control schools on self-reported student violence or victimization after three years of program implementation.
• There were no statistically significant impacts on self-reported violence and victimization between high-risk youth at treatment schools and high-risk youth at control schools after three years of program implementation.
• In a majority of intervention schools, students were exposed to the full set of 16 RiPP lessons in each of the 3 years of implementation although the curriculum was not fully delivered with fidelity.
• By the end of the third year, 83 percent of intervention schools instituted behavioral rules and 78 percent instituted a reward system. In addition, 87 percent of teachers agreed that the rules were well defined and 64 percent agreed that the consequences of breaking school rules were clear.