School-Based Mentoring
Mentoring at K-12 schools, whether by volunteers or school personnel, has been an increasingly popular choice for bringing caring adult and older peer relationships to the lives of more youth for several decades. The school setting is often seen as an opportunity for reaching larger numbers of youth in a controlled setting that also allows access to educational, recreational, and developmental supports that may enhance the mentoring relationship. School-based programs run the gamut of structures and goals:
They can be delivered in one-to-one, group, or team formats, allowing for flexibility in activity offerings based on the number of available mentors and the resources available at the site. They can even involve the uses of older students as mentors in a “near peer” format.
They often, because of the school setting, emphasize aims of facilitating academic gains or improvements in school connectedness and attendance by participating youth⎯although it’s worth noting that many school-based mentoring programs emphasize non-academic goals, such as personal growth, artistic expression, future planning and goal setting (often around the transition into college or career), and social-emotional development.
They can be run directly by school personnel or through a partnership with a community-based service provider who coordinates the program on-site in collaboration with the school leadership.
Regardless of the structure, staffing, and goals of the program, mentoring programs in schools have shown to be a cost-efficient way of increasing the positive relationships students have in their lives, while also having the potential to boost factors that can lead to educational success, such as connectedness to the school environment and peers, improved relationships with teachers and staff, improved feelings of academic competence, and greater access and use of other supports, such as tutoring, credit tracking, counseling, and postsecondary planning.
What does the research say about school-based mentoring?
There have been many prominent evaluations of school-based mentoring programs that are worth noting:
The 2007 study of Big Brothers Big Sisters school-based mentoring model found evidence that school-based mentoring programs could produce outcomes that were similar in size to those found in community-based programs, albeit in slightly different areas of emphasis. This study found evidence of statistically significant impacts primarily in school-related attitudes, performance, and behavior (such as attendance). Unfortunately, the study also found that programs had a difficult time providing a meaningful volume of mentoring during the school year and that the indicated impacts of the program did not appear to continue into the following year. Subsequent analysisfound evidence that older students serving as peer mentors were notably less effective than their adult counterparts, draining some of the broader enthusiasm from a growing peer mentoring movement.
A 2009 study of the U.S. Department of Education’s Student Mentoring Programreported statistically significant improvements for mentored youth compared to controls on a number of outcome measures, including perceived scholastic efficacy, truancy, and absenteeism. However, after correcting for potential capitalization on chance due to testing of effects for numerous outcomes, the authors concluded that there were no impacts on any of the student outcomes measured, either academic or social-emotional outcomes.
The 2008 study of the SMILE program found statistically significant gains for mentored youth (compared to a control group) in several outcomes related to self-esteem and peer support, although the strength of these findings varied considerably based on age, gender, and race. Furthermore, no evidence of program impact at the level of the overall sample was found for any of 17 other outcomes tested in this study.
More recently, a deeper analysis of Big Brothers Big Sister school-based mentoring datafound evidence that relationship closeness (i.e., how close youth reported feeling to their mentors) was a key predictor of academic gains for participating youth. Notably, this same study found evidence that programs like this could achieve academic improvements for youth without emphasizing academics explicitly in program activities or in mentors’ approach, potentially freeing school-based programs to offer a wider variety of supports and activities while still meeting academic goals. This study also found evidence suggesting that youth could be effectively rematched within a school year provided that their second match was also close and satisfying to the youth.
A meta-analysis by Wood and Mayo in 2012 synthesized findings from 6 evaluations of the impact of school-based mentoring for adolescents (11–18 years) on academic performance, attendance, attitudes, behavior, and self-esteem. The authors concluded that the mentoring programs included in this review did not reliably improve any of the outcomes examined.
It is also worth noting that DuBois and colleagues’ 2011 meta-analysis, which included mentoring programs of many types serving youth across a wide range of ages, found evidence of favorable program effects on youths’ grades, attendance, school behavior, and other academic growth.
What does the NMRC offer on school-based mentoring?
Reviews of Specific Programs
The Achievement Mentoring Program is an intervention for urban freshman at risk of dropping out of high school, with the goal of enhancing school-related cognitions and behaviors. Read the review and insights for practitioners.An E-Mentoring Program for Secondary Students with Learning Disabilities intends to improve students’ ability to identify postsecondary career goals and the steps necessary to achieve them. Read the review and insights for practitioners.Brief Instrumental School-Based Mentoring Program is a school-based intervention designed for at-risk middle school students that aims to improve academic performance, promote school connectedness, and life satisfaction and to decrease disciplinary actions. Read the review and insights for practitioners.The Cross-Age Peer Mentoring Program is a school-based peer mentoring program in which high school students provide one-on-one mentoring to late elementary and early middle school students. Read the review and insights for practitioners.Experience Corps is a tutoring and mentoring program to improve the literacy outcomes of elementary school-aged children at risk of academic failure. Read the review and insights for practitioners.The Peer Group Connection (PGC) Program is a high school transition program that targets 9th-grade students in urban high schools who are at-risk of dropping out. The goal is to improve high school graduation rates among participating youths by having junior and senior high school students serve as peer mentors. Read the review and insights for practitioners.The Rochester Resilience Project (RRP) is a school-based intervention to improve the social-emotional and behavioral skills of young children (K-3rd grade) at risk for mental health disorders and substance abuse. Read the review and insights for practitioners.The School-Based Mentoring Program for At-Risk Middle School Youth is a one-to-one mentoring program offered to at-risk students in 7th to 9th grades in an urban middle school setting to reduce their discipline referrals and school absences and to improve their school connectedness. Read the review and the insights for practitioners.Sources of Strength is a school-based suicide prevention program designed to build socioecological-protective influences across a full student population, using youth opinion leaders from diverse social cliques to develop and deliver, with adult mentoring, messaging aimed at changing the norms and behaviors of their peers. Read the reviewand insights for practitioners.Career Academy is a school within a school that uses a multifaceted approach to foster academic success, mental and emotional health, and labor market success. Read the review.Check & Connect is a school-based, structured mentoring program designed to reduce school absences and promote student engagement. Read the review and our insightsfor practitioners. Additionally, read the review and insights for Check & Connect Plus Truancy Board, which pairs the Check & Connect model with a direct partnership with the community truancy board, a group of community leaders, school officials, and representatives of juvenile courts.
Reviews of Relevant Practices
School-based mentoring may involve acting on behalf of students to promote positive outcomes. Read the practice review of Support for Mentor Advocacy and insights for practitioners.School-based mentoring programs may provide structured activity curricula or guidance to mentors about activities they can do with mentees. Read the practice review of Mentor-Mentee Activity Guidance and insights for practitioners.
Blog Posts
School-Based Peer Mentoring: A Powerful Tool to Help Close the Mentoring Gap, by Daniel Oscar and Dr. Margo Ross of Center for Supportive Schools.
Understanding Group Formation is Key to Successful Group Mentoring, by Vida Sanford of Mentoring for Success: Project Arrive, San Francisco Unified School District.
‘CHAMPIONS’ for Students at Broome Street Academy, by Dr. Barbara McKeon of Broome Street Academy.
THRIVE Prepares Future Educators with LGBTQIA Competency, by Vanessa Davis of THRIVE of Southwest PA
Bulletin Examines Trauma-Informed Classrooms, by Abby Lormer, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership
Research Alert: Study Explores School-Based Mentoring Program Outcomes, and the Impact of Mentee Expectations, by Delia Hagan, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership
College & Career Readiness Program Spotlight: Adopt a Class, by Melanie Ervin, Adopt a ClassA series of blog posts are related to mentoring strategies that promote attendance, including a specific school-based mentoring model called Success Mentors, which pairs mentors with youth at risk for chronic absence to promote a sense of belonging for students and families and help troubleshoot obstacles to attendance:
—Relationships Matter: Launching an Elementary Success Mentor Initiative, by Hedy Change, Attendance Works
—2017 September Attendance Month, by Attendance Works and MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership
—A Teacher’s View on Chronic Absenteeism, by Stephen Kostyo, Learning Policy Institute
—Success Mentors Districts Convene to Share Promising School-Integrated Mentoring Practices, by Delia Hagan, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership
—School Attendance and Mentoring: What’s the Connection? by Delia Hagan, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership
Webinars
School-Based Mentoring: Strategic Interventions to Maximize Positive Youth Outcomes.School-Integrated Mentoring.
Implementation Resources
This guidebook, The ABCs of School-Based Mentoring, offers strategies for developing a school-based mentoring program, exploring many aspects of program design and implementation.The Peer Mentoring Handbook offers advice, strategies, and other information to older youth who will be serving as peer mentors to younger children in school and community settings.Building Effective Peer Mentoring Programs in Schools: An Introductory Guide, provides recommendations for recruitment, screening and selection, training and match activities, as well as planning tools for coordinators of school-based peer mentoring programs.Ongoing Training for Mentors: Twelve Interactive Sessions for U.S. Department of Education Mentoring Programs offers activities that address key topics that can come up as mentoring relationships progress. These trainings are intended to support mentors as they encounter challenges and difficult circumstances while working with their mentees.Making the Transition to Middle School Fact Sheet, created by the U.S. Department of Education’s Mentoring Resource Center, offers recommendations to mentoring practitioners and mentors themselves for engaging mentees in school-based mentoring programs, and suggests strategies for maintaining mentoring relationships during mentees’ transition from elementary to middle school.Several other NMRC resources are relevant to any mentor or mentoring program seeking to support mentees in achieving their academic goals, including the College Positive Mentoring Toolkit, Discovering the Possibilities: “C”ing Your Future and the K-12 Journey Map.