Effectiveness of Chester Eastside Programs

Programs have been documented as having solid, positive impact on participants.

o CEM Program Coordinator and Board Member have worked as part of Widener
     University team to evaluate programs.

o Detailed scholarly works have been compiled for publication.

•   Parents First has strengthened parents involvement with their children and their schools. After completing Parents First, the parents and guardians spent more time reading with their children. They became more involved in the school system. One parent joined the PTO and another said that her child's teacher shared her home phone number so that they could communicate better. Parents felt more comfortable contacting teachers, obtained more information about children's schools and education, and reported fewer barriers when participating in school activities. Parents also showed more affection toward their children and became less frustrated with misbehavior.
  
  
•   In the after school homework program, overall behavior, self-esteem, work habits, positive social behavior, feelings of belonging, and how much the kids liked the program all increased. These are almost all the categories we measured! They also steadily improved the longer they were in the program. (They got better scores in each evaluation session than they did in the one before). The kids' grades also improved over the course of the program - no one had less than a B by the end