Remediating Academic and Non-Academic Skill Deficits among Disadvantaged Youth

描述（由申请人提供）：改善弱势青年的生活机会是美国的一项首要政策，但有效的干预策略却非常少，尤其是针对男性。缺乏对如何有效干预的理解有助于解释为什么今天美国的高中毕业率与1970年没有太大区别（尽管上学的回报在增加），以及为什么今天美国的凶杀率与1950年（或1900年）没有太大区别。本项目（是我们之前提交的1-P01-HD076816-01的修订版）的核心主题是更多地了解最有效（和最具成本效益）的方法，以改善弱势青年的学业和其他长期生活成果，并降低暴力参与和犯罪的风险。我们通过三个相互关联的项目来应对这些挑战，这些项目将由我们的跨学科研究团队(包括经济学家Jens Ludwig (PD), Philip Cook， Jonathan Guryan和Roland Fryer，社会学家Susan Mayer， George Farkas和Gretchen Cusick，心理学家Kenneth Dodge和Laurence Steinberg，以及公共卫生专家罗茜娜·安德尔和哈罗德·波拉克]与芝加哥公立学校（CPS）和两家非营利服务提供商（青年指导和配对教育）合作：项目1和项目2是对12所CPS高中的2134名9年级和10年级的弱势男性青少年进行独立随机抽样，进行最佳实践的学术干预（Match提供的强化数学补习），根据Fryer， 2011年的差异中差异研究，这似乎非常有希望，但尚未进行大规模随机对照试验。（或RCT）和最佳实践非学术干预（认知行为疗法的改编版本，或CBT，称为“成为一个男人”，我们从之前的三个试点中获得了令人鼓舞的结果，但还没有关于作用机制的数据）。这两个项目一起创建了一个2x2的因子设计，让我们测试最佳实践对青少年的学术和非学术支持的相对有效性（和成本效益），以及同时干预这两个领域是否会产生协同效应（多于相加）。我们将能够利用学校教育、逮捕和劳动力市场结果的纵向行政记录来衡量一段时间内的结果。项目3建议在同一样本上收集个人数据，以测量结果和候选中介，包括几种新的候选中介测量，如学校期望（我们认为匹配的关键）和元认知过程（我们认为这可能是BAM效应背后的关键机制-因此将我们的干预概念框架与社会情感学习文献区分开来）。除了有助于管理和协调这些相互关联的项目的行政核心之外，我们还通过两个新的核心加强了当前的修订版：一个是实施和行政数据核心，它将收集详细的过程度量以供我们的分析使用；另一个是分析和传播核心。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Improving the life chances of disadvantaged youth is a top policy priority for the U.S., yet remarkably few effective intervention strategies have been identified - particularly for males. This lack of understanding of how to effectively intervene hels explain why the high school graduation rate in the US today is not much different from in 1970 (despite growing returns to schooling), and why the homicide rate in the US today is not much different from that of 1950 (or 1900). The core theme of the present project (which is a revised version of our previous submission 1-P01-HD076816-01), is to learn more about the most effective (and cost-effective) ways to improve schooling and other long-term life outcomes and reduce risk of violence involvement and delinquency of disadvantaged youth. We address these challenges here with three interrelated projects that would be carried out by our inter-disciplinar research team [including economists Jens Ludwig (PD), Philip Cook, Jonathan Guryan and Roland Fryer, sociologists Susan Mayer, George Farkas and Gretchen Cusick, psychologists Kenneth Dodge and Laurence Steinberg, and public health experts Roseanna Ander and Harold Pollack] in collaboration with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and two non-profits service providers (Youth Guidance and Match Education): Projects 1 and 2 involve independent randomizations of the same sample of 2,134 disadvantaged male youth in 9th and 10th grade in 12 CPS high schools to a best-practice academic intervention (intensive math remediation delivered by Match, which seems very promising based on the difference-in-difference study of Fryer, 2011, but has not yet been subject to a large-scale randomized controlled trial, or RCT) and a best-practice non-academic intervention (an adapted version of cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, called Becoming a Man for which we have encouraging results from three previous pilots, but no data yet on mechanisms of action). These two projects together create a 2x2 factorial design that lets us test the relative effectiveness (and cost-effectiveness) of best-practice academic vs. non-academic supports for adolescents, and whether intervening in both domains simultaneously yields synergistic (more than additive) effects. We will be able to measure outcomes over time using longitudinal administrative records on schooling, arrests, and labor market outcomes. Project 3 proposes in-person data collection on this same sample to measure outcomes and candidate mediators, including several novel measures of candidate mediators such as schooling expectations (we think key for Match) and meta-cognitive processes (which we think is the likely to be the key mechanism behind BAM effects - and so distinguishes our conceptual framework for this intervention from the social-emotion learning literature). In addition to the administrative core that would help manage and coordinate these interrelated projects, we have strengthened the current revision with two new cores: an implementation and administrative data core, which will among other things collect detailed process measures for use in our analysis, as well as an analysis and dissemination core.