I Have a Dream
I Have A Dream is a program that encourages students in low-income communities to complete high school and go on to college. The program guarantees that tuition for higher education will be covered after high school graduation. In addition, it provides participants with tutoring and counseling from elementary school through high school. Each I Have A Dream program sponsors either an entire grade level of students at a low-income public elementary school or an entire cohort of same-age children in a public housing development. These students are tracked over time and encouraged to participate in program activities, such as tutoring, mentoring, counseling, community service, and recreational opportunities. A full-time paid staff member coordinates program activities and serves as a mentor to program participants. A group of sponsors commits to working with the students throughout the life of the program and often provides the program with funding and other resources. The sponsors and other local donors ensure that participants who graduate from high school receive post-secondary education tuition assistance.
Reviewed Research
Dropout Prevention
As of March 2009, no studies of I Have a Dream were found that fell within the scope of the Dropout Prevention review protocol and met WWC evidence standards. Therefore, the WWC is unable to draw any research based conclusions about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of I Have a Dream to improve outcomes in this area.
A group of closely related outcomes.
A summary of the effectiveness of an intervention in an outcome domain, based on the quality of research, the statistical significance of findings, the magnitude of findings, and the consistency of findings across studies.
 Positive: strong evidence that intervention had a positive effect on outcomes. |
 Potentially Positive: evidence that intervention had a positive effect on outcomes with no overriding contrary evidence. |
 Mixed: evidence that intervention’s effect on outcomes is inconsistent. |
 No Discernible: no evidence that intervention had an effect on outcomes. |
 Potentially Negative: evidence that intervention had a negative effect on outcomes with no overriding contrary evidence. |
 Negative: strong evidence that intervention had a negative effect on outcomes. |
For more, please see the WWC Glossary entry for rating of effectiveness.
The number of studies that met WWC design standards and provide evidence of effectiveness. Selecting an item below will display all studies that met WWC design studies in the domain. Selecting a study citation will take you to more information on that study and its findings.
For more, please see the WWC Glossary entry for study rating.
Grades of the students examined in the studies that met WWC design standards, which may not reflect the full range of grades for which the intervention may be used.
The number of students included in the studies that met WWC design standards.
The sample size for the studies that met WWC design standards.
An indicator of the effect of the intervention, the improvement index can be interpreted as the expected change in percentile rank for an average comparison group student if that student had received the intervention.
For more, please see the WWC Glossary entry for improvement index.
The indicator represents the highest level of similarity found between your students and each of the high-quality studies of the intervention. Three filled in ovals indicates that at least one study that met standards was conducted on students very similar to yours. Clicking on the indicator for a study will provide information on the similarity for each of the characteristics you selected.