As the end of the school year approaches and families face another pandemic summer, a new survey of afterschool and summer programs brings some encouraging news: Providers are more likely to be open and operating in person this summer and are more optimistic about a return to normal than in previous surveys. However, providers also anticipate…

This communication highlights guiding considerations and allowable practical strategies for 2020 Summer Learning Programs offered by Vermont supervisory unions/districts (SUs/SDs) as they engage in planning efforts to support Continuity of Learning and a strong healthy start to the 2020-2021 school year. Supervisory Unions/Districts (SUs/SDs) that…

This qualitative case study explores student and staff perceptions of whether and how participation in pre-enrollment summer transition programs influenced the sense of belonging and preparedness of first-generation and limited-income students in their first year of college. These summer transition programs are provided as part of the Kessler…

Text Steps was a project piloted by Ascendium Education Group in 2015 and expanded to 13 school districts in Wisconsin between 2018 and 2020. Its goal was to combat summer melt through a texting program. Summer melt, in which college-intending high school students are unable to enroll in the fall for any number of reasons, is a well-documented…

Culturally-adapted evidence-based programs (EBPs) are needed to promote healthy behaviors among Native teens and young adults. Little is known about the facilitators and barriers of implementing and sustaining EBPs in Native communities. This paper aims to identify those factors described by educators who implemented the Native Students Together…

In 2011, The Wallace Foundation launched the National Summer Learning Project (NSLP) to expand summer program opportunities for students in urban districts and to study the effectiveness of district-led summer programs and how they could be well implemented. Through the NSLP, The Wallace Foundation has provided support to public school districts…

This brief is one in a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision-makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the novel coronavirus pandemic. It begins with an at-a-glance view of an effective voluntary academic summer learning program structure (duration, class…

The Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program was launched as an effort to address the loss of access to free and reduced-price school meals due to widespread school closures at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. As schools reopened in a shifting mix of fully virtual, hybrid, and in-person formats and families lacked consistent access…

The federal government has a long history of investing in programs for feeding children, starting with federal aid for school lunch programs in the 1930s. Today, federal child nutrition programs support food served to children in schools and a variety of other institutional settings. The child nutrition programs support meals and snacks served to…

The FNS Research Corner provides a continuing series to summarize recently completed and current research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in the area of child nutrition. Summaries of recently completed research projects and in-progress research are provided in this article.

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? In 2017, the California Department of Education's Expanded Learning Division (after-school and summer programs) took a radically different approach by cultivating the…

This article presents a program evaluation of a six-week middle school pilot program focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) enrichment using robotics, specifically VEX Robots™. Two key questions guided this evaluation: (a) Does exposure to robotics influence middle school dispositions about STEM and careers in STEM? and (b)…