Caring School Community Program

The Caring School Community (CSC) program, formerly the Child Development Project, is a research-based elementary school program that builds classroom and school community. It focuses on strengthening students' connectedness to school--a pivotal element for promoting academic motivation and achievement, for fostering character formation, and for reducing drug abuse, violence, and mental health problems. CSC is designed to (1) create a caring, cooperative school environment, (2) build connections and foster trust and respect among students and teachers, (3) strengthen connections between school and home and promote parents' involvement in their children's learning, (4) build students' academic motivation and support their academic learning, (5) foster students' empathy and understanding of others, and (6) promote students' commitment to being fair, helpful, respectful, and responsible.The program includes four complementary components:

(1) Class meetings--provide teachers and students with a forum to get to know one another, discuss issues, identify and solve problems, and make decisions that affect classroom climate.

(2) Cross-age "buddies" activities--a "buddies" program that pairs whole classes of older and younger students for academic and recreational activities. Helps to build caring cross-age relationships and create a school-wide climate of trust.

(3) Home/School connection activities--short conversational activities (in both English and Spanish versions) that students do at home with their parent or caregiver, and then debrief back in their classroom. Validates the families' perspectives, cultures, and traditions, and promotes interpersonal understanding and appreciation.

(4) School-wide community-building activities--innovative, inclusive, collaborative activities that link students, parents, and school staff in building a caring, school environment. Fosters new school traditions and promotes involvement of parents who typically do not participate at school.

The goal of the Caring School Community program is to build classroom and school communities in order to support learning, academic success, positive relationships and character formation.

After 3 years, CSC students, relative to their comparison school counterparts, showed a greater sense of the school as a caring community, more fondness for school, stronger academic motivation, more frequent reading of books outside of school, a higher sense of efficacy, stronger commitment to democratic values, better conflict-resolution skills, more concern for others, more frequent altruistic behavior, and less use of alcohol.

CSC has been extensively and rigorously evaluated in several studies over the last couple decades. After 3 years of the original CSC study, students in five high-implementing CSC schools, relative to their comparison school counterparts, showed 1) a greater sense of the school as a caring community (33% higher than would be expected if they had not experienced the program); 2) more fondness for school (12% higher than would be expected); 3) stronger academic motivation (24% higher); 4) more frequent reading of books outside of school (8% higher); 5) a higher sense of efficacy (6% higher); 6) stronger commitment to democratic values (12% higher); 7) better conflict-resolution skills (17% higher); 8) more concern for others (10% higher); 9) more frequent altruistic behavior (8% higher); and 10) less use of alcohol (13% lower than would be expected if they had not experienced the program).

The follow-up study from three of the high-implementing CSC elementary schools showed that when these students were in middle school they continued to show significantly better attitudes and behaviors than former comparison students. Specifically, during middle school, program students showed 1) higher grades in core academic classes (25% achieved an average of half a grade-point higher in English, mathematics, science, and social studies than would be expected if they had not experienced the program); 2) higher achievement test scores (25% higher than would be expected); 3) a greater sense of community (15% higher); 4) higher educational aspirations (18% higher); 5) more fondness for school (19% higher); 6) greater trust in and respect for teachers (18% higher); 7) greater involvement in positive activities such as sports, clubs, and youth groups (20% higher); 8) less misconduct at school (19% lower than would be expected if they had not experienced the program); and 9) less delinquent behavior (13% lower than would be expected).