The R-CITY Youth Violence Preventive Intervention: Primary Outcomes from a School Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial

Student experiences of racism and discrimination in schools can undermine their sense of safety and psychological wellbeing and contribute to aggression and violence. Yet educational systems rarely implement violence prevention programming with bias prevention or equity promotion components. To address this gap, researchers and educators partnered to develop R-CITY (Reducing Racism and Violence through Collaborative Intervention with Teachers and Youth; Bottiani et al., School Mental Health, 16(3), 632-648, 2024). A school-level randomized controlled trial was conducted in 27 elementary and middle schools to assess the 'value-added' benefits of supplementing the standard Second Step SEL program (22-27 lessons and group implementation support; comparison condition) with R-CITY's equity-focused one-to-one teacher coaching and grade-differentiated sets of six equity lessons with implementation supports (Second Step + R-CITY, intervention condition). Augmenting Second Step with R-CITY equity-focused components was associated with significant effects on one of six observational measures of student behavior (physical aggression) and one of three teacher-report measures (general teaching self-efficacy), both in the hypothesized direction. Sensitivity analyses excluding the most severely COVID-impacted cohort identified an additional effect on teacher-reported racial discomfort. No significant effects were found on observed teacher practice outcomes or suspension disproportionality rates. Results provide initial evidence that supplementing traditional SEL programming with equity content and coaching can produce significant incremental effects on select outcomes, including reductions in physical aggression and improvements in teacher capacity; however, further research is needed to evaluate the intervention's cost-effectiveness and effects on equity-specific outcomes.