Impact
Horizons makes me feel like I have a second family.
- student, Horizons Greater Washington
What do students get out of their Horizons experience?
Students' reading and math skills improve significantly each summer, and students return to their schools excited to learn. They build long-term friendships and relationships with peers and teachers that often continue well beyond program graduation. They graduate from high school and go on to college or other post-secondary training. Horizons students develop life skills like commitment, resilience, confidence, and a desire to contribute to their community. With the tools to navigate their world, Horizons students embrace a more expansive view of what’s possible, and find a path of success.
How do you measure success?
Across the Horizons Network, we capture a broad range of information and use that data for continuous improvement. Since 1995, Horizons National has worked closely with third-party evaluators and education data companies, including Yale University, Amplify, and Renaissance Learning, to assess the effectiveness of the program. Key findings demonstrate that Horizons students, who represent a broad range of learning styles and ability, achieve success in school and beyond. In a recent study of 5 years of school district data for Horizons students and their peers, Horizons students achieved:
- Consistent gains of 6-10 weeks of grade equivalence in reading and math over each 6-week summer session
- Higher attendance rates
- Lower rates of chronic absenteeism
- Higher scores on standardized assessments of elementary math and science
- Higher GPAs in 9th grade
- More course credit earned in 9th and 10th grade
- Fewer incidents of repeating a grade
- Fewer disciplinary referrals
