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Program Description

Overview The Battle Mountain After School Program (BMASP) was designed as a place where at-risk children from Battle Mountain, Nevada, a rural mining community, can go after school to receive care and a meaningful educational experience. BMASP has three primary components: after school supervision, homework completion, and life-skills (e.g., community service and career) education. The program objectives are to alter students’ locus of control (i.e., teaching children about accepting responsibility for their actions) and to improve students’ academic achievement and attitudes toward school.
Start Date circa 1993
Scope local
Type after school
Location rural
Setting public school
Participants kindergarten and elementary school students (K–5)
Number of Sites/Grantees one
Number Served 15–20 children
Components BMASP was designed to address local community concerns, such as the childcare needs of parents who work 12-hour shifts in remote gold-mining operations; the high incidence of youth alcohol abuse, suicide, and depression; and the lack of professional community resources and licensed childcare available in many areas. The program is offered free of charge for 2½ hours each school day. It is open to children in kindergarten through fifth grade from single-parent homes or homes where two parents both work outside the home. After arriving at the program, children are given a snack and then spend about 45 minutes doing homework and receiving tutoring from program teachers. The next hour is spent doing life-skills education activities. Lastly, recreational activities are provided for the children until the program ends for the day.
Funding Level approximately $15,000 per year in the early 1990’s
Funding Sources State of Nevada, local gold mines, Lander County School District, and the Cooperative Extension


Evaluation

Overview The evaluation was conducted in an effort to build community support for the program by examining the potential impacts of the program in accomplishing its stated goals.
Evaluator Jerry Neufeld, Marilyn G. Smith, and George C. Hill, Nevada Cooperative Extension; Harvey Estes, Lander County School District
Evaluations Profiled Rural After-School Child Care: A Demonstration Project in a Remote Mining Community
Evaluations Planned N/A
Report Availability Neufeld, J., Smith, M.G., Estes, H., & Hill, G. C. (1995). Rural after-school child care: A demonstration project in a remote mining community. Rural Special Education Quarterly, 14(3), 12–16.

Contacts

Evaluation Marilyn Smith
University of Nevada Cooperative Extension Service
701 Walnut
Elko, NV 89801-3347
Tel: 775-738-7291
Email: smithm@unce.unr.edu
Program Harvey Estes
Assistant Superintendent
310 East Fourth Street
Winnemucca, NV 89445
Tel: 775-623-8100
Fax: 775-623-8102
Email: hestes@humboldt.k12.nv.us
Profile Updated September 10, 2004

Evaluation: Rural After-School Child Care: A Demonstration Project in a Remote Mining Community


Evaluation Description

Evaluation Purpose To examine BMASP’s impact on students’ locus of control, attitudes toward school, and academic achievement.
Evaluation Design Quasi-Experimental: Pretest and posttest data were collected for BMASP participants and a selected group of children not in the program who were matched to program participants on age, school, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and sex. Approximately 50 children were included in each group. Because the children elected to participate in the program, and each child therefore did not have an equal chance of being selected for either the program or comparison group, students’ pretest scores were controlled in all analyses. Only students with valid pretest/posttest data were included in the analyses.
Data Collection Methods Observation: Classroom teacher observations were used to evaluate student attitudes toward school. BMASP teachers asked each program student’s regular classroom teacher to make behavioral observations at both the beginning and end of the program to assess changes in students’ initiative, social attentiveness (e.g., speaking in turn, talking appropriately, and being cooperative), success and failure, and self-confidence.

Secondary Source/Data Review: Participants and control group students’ grades for both the semester during which the program began and the semester in which the program ended were collected to examine changes in academic achievement. Grades were reported as overall grade point averages (GPA).

Test/Assessments: Students completed the Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control instrument (Nowicki & Strickland, 1973), designed to assess the degree to which children connect their actions to the outcomes that result from them (e.g., “Do you feel that most of the time it doesn’t pay to try hard because things never turn out right anyway?”). The instrument was completed at both the beginning and end of the program.

Reference
Nowicki, S., & Strickland, B. R. (1973). A locus of control scale for children. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 40, 148–154.
Data Collection Timeframe Data were collected over the course of the school year circa 1993–1994.


Findings:
Summative/Outcome Findings

Academic Program participants’ grades showed positive trends: GPA gains were larger for program participants than for comparison group students, though these differences were not statistically significant. First and second grade BMASP participants increased their GPAs by .32 points, as compared to .25 points for comparison group students. Third, fourth, and fifth grade BMASP participants increased their GPAs by .15 points, as compared to .05 points for comparison group students.

Classroom teachers reported seeing positive changes in participants’ attitudes toward school. Teachers observed more initiative, more social attentiveness, easier dealings with success and failure, and more self-confidence in BMASP participants over the course of the year, though statistical significance was not tested for these gains.
Youth Development There was a significant program treatment effect for students’ locus of control (p < .01), indicating that BMASP participants had a larger increase in understanding of the relationship between their actions and the resulting outcomes than did comparison group youth.

Program teachers observed several children who were reserved in nature at the beginning of the program become less withdrawn, active participators, and even leaders of some activities at the end of the program.

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Published by Harvard Family Research Project