Evaluating ImpACT in KIPP Charter Schools

The United States undeniably suffers from an educational gap that has only been continually growing due to the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic has shifted classes to a virtual platform, thereby limiting students’ access to readily available teachers, face-to-face tutoring, and overall academic motivation. Poor educational results in high school can lead to a continual cycle of struggle in college and inability to maintain academic stability. ImpACT, a project within the University of Houston’s Bonner Leaders Program, provides free personalized ACT mentoring to high school students in underprivileged communities to help bridge the educational gap. Our primary community partners are KIPP Houston High School and KIPP Sunnyside High School. Under current circumstances, mentors run sessions virtually in breakout rooms by going over test strategies and practicing problems to increase student confidence and test performance. After the ACT exam, the program continues to offer personalized college prep mentoring by providing helpful scholarship websites, tips to perfect application essays, and resume building. This presentation uses a falsifiable logic model to analyze the successes and setbacks of the current online platform. As of March 2021, the project has implemented two short-term programs in both KIPP Sunnyside and KIPP Houston and depicts two different models that demonstrate the personalized and unique approach that ImpACT took to serve its partners during the pandemic. Based on the results, ImpACT seeks to improve mentee attendance, mentee commitment to the program, and ACT subject training for mentors.