The Office of Management and Budget requested that the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) oversee an independent impact evaluation of the federal Student Mentoring Program, and in 2005 IES contracted with Abt Associates and its team of subcontractors (Branch Associates, Moore and Associates, and the Center for Resource Management) to conduct the study. This three and a half year evaluation is designed to describe the grant-funded programs and to estimate their impact on a range of student outcomes. Findings reveal that school-based mentoring programs can provide at-risk students with guidance, academic assistance, and new experiences. But mentoring programs under the federal competitive Student Mentoring Program grants had no statistically significant impacts on student-level outcomes after one school year. [For the full report, "Impact Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Education's Student Mentoring Program. Final Report. NCEE 2009-4047," see ED504310.]