Current & Future Studies
School-Connect, in partnership with WestEd, a non-profit educational research and technical assistance organization, is in the preliminary stages of conducting an outcome study of the School-Connect curriculum. If your local educational agency (school or district) would like to be considered for an outcome study, please contact Julea Douglass at jdouglass@school-connect.net.

School-Connect Pilot Studies
School-Connect®: Optimizing the High School Experience was piloted with 175 high school students (predominately ninth graders) in four schools as part of the program development process. The curriculum was implemented, to varying degrees, in English, health, and life skills classes that met daily and in advisory classes that met one to two times a week. Feedback from teachers, backed by classroom observations, indicated that the curriculum was positively received in classes that met daily and assigned homework and letter grades. In these classes, students were generally interested and engaged in lesson activities and discussions and reported using program skills in real life, and teachers reported positive changes in students’ effort on academic assignments and involvement in class discussions. 

Program implementation in advisory classes was often interrupted by school-wide events, creating one- to two-week gaps between lessons, and did not include the assignment of homework or letter grades. Teachers in these classes had a more equivocal response to the lessons, strongly liking some and others less so. As a result of the pilot, the authors revised the curriculum by reducing the number of lessons and reordering the lessons into four modules, creating guidelines for effective program implementation and links to academic content, and adding more active learning exercises and opportunities for students to share real-life experiences.