This special "America After 3PM" report takes a closer look at the afterschool experience for children living in rural communities. Earlier "America After 3PM" reports examined how children spend the hours after school, documenting the participation in afterschool programs, the unmet demand for programs, program offerings, and…

Research on recreational media use among youth indicates young people of color who spend more time with media may also be at higher risk for school disengagement and low personal contentment compared to their white peers. This puts these students in a position to be even more influenced by the themes and messages that abound in pop culture,…

How can afterschool programs engage middle school students of color as they enter their teenage years? The authors asked this question while working with the Bridge Project, a drop-in community-based academic enrichment program serving low-income children and adolescents of color living in public housing in Denver, Colorado. Faced with dwindling…

This study examines math and English standardized test score progress of students who participated in the 21st century program across 2 years of involvement with a focus on the learning trajectories of limited English proficiency (LEP) students. We find that math and English scores are highly associated with the school and program type--even…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the academic impacts of the Twenty-First Century Community Learning Centers on students who participated in this program. The following research questions guided the study: (a) are there significant differences between the Criterion Reference Competency Test English Language Arts scores of…

Middle school students' experiences at after-school programs were compared as they participated in different types of activities and with different social partners. The students (N = 165) attended eight programs in three Midwestern states. A total of 1,596 experiences were randomly sampled using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM) during 1 week…

Experiences that are deeply engaging and enjoyable, engender full concentration, and present a balance between challenge and skill propel or push development forward. For the past twenty years, researchers have sought to locate environments in which this combination of effort, skill, interest, and enjoyment is more likely. This article describes a…

Describes the Hilltop Emergent Literacy Project (HELP) in Toledo (Ohio), an afterschool educational program for poor, mostly African American, students in kindergarten through grade 3, and evaluates its effects on 12 kindergartners in comparison with a control group of 12 kindergartners. Program effectiveness is supported. (SLD)