The Department of Education has awarded a $9.7 million contract for a five-year national study evaluating the effectiveness of a yet-to-be-chosen violence-prevention program for middle schools.
The grant, awarded last month, went to RTI International, a research firm based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Two other research groups, Tanglewood Research, in Greensboro, N.C., and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, of Calverton, Md., are subcontractors on the project.
Efforts are under way to select the program that the researchers will evaluate. Once a program is chosen, the researchers plan to randomly assign 40 middle schools across the country to either implement the program or continue their usual efforts to curb violence among students.
