Department of Education May 15, 2006 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In accordance with the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended (Privacy Act), the Department of Education (the Department) publishes this notice of a new system of records entitled ``Impact Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education's Student Mentoring Program'', 18-13- 14. The purpose of the impact evaluation is to determine the effectiveness of the Department's student mentoring program using a rigorous research design. The system will contain information about students and their mentors participating in mentoring programs funded by the Department. The sample of approximately 1,400 students will be drawn from approximately 30 of these mentoring programs. In order to assure that students can be randomly assigned to either treatment or control conditions for the study without denying available mentoring services, the mentoring programs that have been selected for inclusion in the study are likely to recruit more students for mentoring services than could possibly be served by the program. Within each mentoring program, students for the study will be selected from a pool of students who have been nominated by their schools to receive mentoring services and whose parents have enrolled them in the mentoring program. Through random assignment, approximately half of the students in the study will work with a mentor and approximately half will not. The system will include the students' demographic information, such as date of birth and race/ethnicity, as well as self-reported attitudes about school, delinquent behaviors, personal responsibility, and the quality of their relationships with peers and adults. In addition, the system will include information about students gathered from school records (e.g., grades, standardized test scores, and disciplinary actions taken by the school). For the students in the study who are paired with mentors, the system will also include the mentors' demographic information, their self-reported experiences with the training and support provided by the mentoring program, and the activities in which mentors and students engaged.