Time and Stability Seen as Key to Effective Mentoring

Conflicting studies on school-based mentoring programs for students tend to agree on at least one thing: The most critical element of effective mentoring—a stable relationship of at least a year—has also proved to be among the most difficult to align with school-based programs.

A new analysis of three recent “gold standard” evaluations of school mentoring programs has found the practice can improve a student’s attendance at and connection to school, but the sporadic and short-lived mentoring that is often associated with school-based programs, as opposed to community-based ones, could harm students.

David L. DuBois, a University of Illinois at Chicago researcher and a co-author of the study published in the latest issue of the Society for Research in Child Development’s Social Policy Report , has found previously that children in mentoring relationships for less than six months actually got worse in some respects compared with students who...