This October, MDRC will partner with the Robin Hood Foundation to launch a full-scale demonstration and evaluation of the High 5s program in 24 public schools in New York City. The program provides extracurricular math clubs for kindergartners who participated in a preschool math intervention called Making Pre-K Count. High 5s clubs are run by trained facilitators from Bank Street College of Education.

Making Pre-K Count and High 5s are the first projects of the Robin Hood Early Childhood Research Initiative, a collaboration between MDRC and the Robin Hood Foundation that seeks the most effective ways to improve the life trajectories of NYC children living in poverty. High 5s is also supported by The Heising-Simons Foundation and the Overdeck Family Foundation.

Robin Hood’s investment in these two projects is motivated by evidence that strong early math skills are predictive of later achievement and have the potential to increase both high school graduation and college attendance rates. Over the course of the two studies, children who participate in both Making Pre-K Count and High 5s will receive the Building Blocks preschool curriculum, which includes intensive training and coaching for classroom teachers through the Making Pre-K Count project, followed by High 5s kindergarten math clubs. In High 5s clubs, Bank Street’s facilitators provide small groups of children with targeted and engaging instruction three times a week, outside of core instructional time. Many facilitators are credentialed at the paraprofessional level, making the intervention particularly scalable if successful.

The two years of linked interventions, in which High 5s picks up where the Building Blocks curriculum leaves off, offer significant prospects for longer-term impacts.

The High 5s curriculum was developed by researchers at the University of Michigan with ongoing input from Doug Clements and Julia Sarama, the developers of the Building Blocks intervention. With approval from the Department of Education, a small pilot of High 5s Clubs was conducted in three public schools during the 2014-2015 school year. Overwhelmingly positive feedback from schools, families, and facilitators confirmed the feasibility of implementing the High 5s model in New York City schools. In 2015-2016, a randomized control trial of High 5s Clubs will be implemented in 24 public schools. Fifty percent of eligible children whose families sign up will receive a spot in High 5s Clubs, and 50 percent will be in the comparison group, which will receive kindergarten instruction as planned by their schools.

MDRC’s research team will follow children’s progress through at least third grade, to study the effects of the Making Pre-K Count preschool intervention by itself, as well as the impact of the preschool intervention as enhanced by High 5s math clubs.