The Everyone Graduates Center and City Year

Advancing student academic outcomes

Research on City Year by The Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University provides strong evidence that City Year’s holistic approach to providing school-based interventions is successful in advancing student social, emotional and academic outcomes in schools, specifically schools that predominantly serve students of color and students from low-income families.

Key findings of the multi-year project include:

• There is a statistically significant, consistent relationship between students’ social-emotional skills and academic outcomes, with an enhanced impact in the ninth grade.
• Making gains in social-emotional skills is like gaining an entire school year of achievement growth in math or English for students in grades three-10.
• More time spent with a City Year AmeriCorps member, serving as a student success coach, is associated with improvements in social, emotional, academic and attendance outcomes.

Additional findings include:

• Replicating the results from the original study, the 2022 report confirmed that students’ social-emotional skills are positively related to their academic outcomes in a manner that is both statistically significant and educationally substantial.​
• More time spent with a City Year AmeriCorps member is associated with improvements in social, emotional, academic, and attendance outcomes. (The fact that the results were replicated with a larger sample adds to the reliability of the original findings and raises the external validity of the findings and their applicability to a wider range of students and settings.​)
• In terms of City Year interventions, benefits for students are durable, lasting beyond the first year, and exposure to the supports for more than one year may lead to even stronger social-emotional and academic impacts.
• Across contexts, AmeriCorps members, serving as student success coaches, described trust as the foundation for developing relationships with students. Corps members relied on a multitude of strategies for cultivating trust, including establishing clear boundaries and being authentic with students.

2023 Report: The dynamics of City Year interactions with students and how they contribute to social-emotional learning and academic outcomes

The final report in the EGC series yields new insights about the importance of trust-building in schools and how trusting relationships influence learning environments and support student growth.

2023 report overview

White Paper: Building Networks of Relational Trust: How consistent and caring relationships support students and adults in schools.

2022 Report: Connecting social-emotional development and academic indicators across multiple years

Building on the 2020 report, this study deepens the questions asked in the initial project, finding that students’ social-emotional skills are highly variable throughout the school year and influenced by context.

The 2022 report also reinforced earlier findings that time spent with an AmeriCorps member results in improved student outcomes.

2022 report overview

2020 Report: Connecting social-emotional development, academic achievement, and on-track outcomes: A multi-district study of grades three-10 students supported by City Year AmeriCorps members

This study provides strong evidence that City Year’s holistic approach to school-based services is successful in advancing student social, emotional, and academic outcomes in schools that are systemically under-resourced.

2020 report overview