The community of East Lake, home to Charles R. Drew Charter School (Drew), is 6 miles from downtown Atlanta. In 1995, crime in East Lake was 19 times higher than the national average. Now, violent crime is down 95 percent. In 1995, 88 percent of residents were unemployed. Now, only 5 percent receive welfare. In 1995, just 5 percent of fifth…

Not only are middle and high school-aged youth difficult to engage in afterschool activities, but they are more likely to have unique demands on their time in the hours afterschool. This issue brief highlights the challenges providers face in serving older youth and the innovative strategies that programs have used to recruit and retain older…

When faculty members at Furman Middle School in Sumter, South Carolina, expressed concern about the lack of time in each day to provide the interventions, remediation, and enrichment the students needed to be prepared for state testing, their principal devised a creative flexible schedule to meet student needs. These include: (1) a morning…