Connect with Kids

Connect with Kids
September 14, 2006

Overview

Connect with Kids aims to promote prosocial attitudes and positive behavior of elementary (grades 3–5) and secondary (grades 6–12) school students by teaching core character values. Lesson plans include videos, story summaries, discussion questions, student games, and activities for both core and supplemental character traits. The classroom curriculum is reinforced by a website component and a schoolwide and community outreach components. The program can be incorporated into an existing curriculum or used as a standalone program. The school or teacher decides on the number of character traits covered in each session, so the program duration may vary from one semester to an entire academic year.

Research

One study of Connect with Kids met the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards with reservations. This study, which included more than 800 elementary, middle, and high school students from 46 classrooms in eight urban, suburban, and rural school districts in Kansas and Missouri, examined results on students' behavior.¹

Effectiveness

Connect with Kids was found to have potentially positive effects on middle and high school students' behavior.

	Behavior	Knowledge, attitudes, and values	Academic achievement
Rating of effectiveness	Potentially positive effects	Not reported	Not reported
Improvement index²	Average: +16 percentile points Range: +10 to +23 percentile points	Not reported	Not reported

¹ In the case of the Connect with Kids report, a correction for multiple comparisons, but not for clustering, was needed.
² These numbers show the average and the range of improvement indices for all findings across the two studies.

Institute of Education Sciences
What Works Clearinghouse

U.S. Department of Education