REACH Impact Evaluation (2019)

The Raising Educational Achievement Coalition of Harlem program, a partnership between Teachers College, Columbia University, and six schools in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, aims to achieve a mutually beneficial partnership between the university, schools, and community organizations. The program supports schools in five areas – Leadership, Teaching and Learning, Expanded Learning Opportunities, Physical and Mental Health, and Family and Community Engagement. Previous evaluation work has focused on implementation and costs, finding the program is generally implemented with fidelity but not without challenges in sustaining an effective partnership, and that the program is comprehensive but costly at approximately $1500 per student per year, or 10% on top of average per-student spending. This phase of evaluation work focuses on program impacts, estimating its effects on student achievement, student engagement and well-being outcomes tied to program domains, and school climate using an innovative difference-in-differences with matching estimator. Preliminary estimates suggest the program may have modestly positive effects on ELA scores and student attendance in elementary and middle schools, positive effects on high school graduation, and slightly negative effects on school climate survey measures, possibly due to raised expectations.