The school-wide 4Rs Program—Reading, Writing, Respect, and Resolution—trains and provides ongoing coaching and support to teachers in implementing a developmentally appropriate social-emotional learning and literacy curriculum. The program’s goals are to promote students’ literacy, conflict resolution skills, and inter-group understanding. This study builds on an existing intervention study that measures the impacts of the 4Rs Program on child-level outcomes. This new study will estimate the impact of the program on change in classroom practices and climate as well as in other settings such as playgrounds. The experimental study takes place in 270 classrooms in 18 New York City public elementary schools (9 experimental and 9 control) with 2,400 low-income, racially and ethnically diverse third through fifth graders.
Can a school-wide social-emotional learning and literacy program improve how classrooms function? Do the effects of the program also extend to non-classroom school settings?
