The number of students attending afterschool programs has skyrocketed in recent years, currently serving an estimated 8.4 million children (Afterschool Alliance, 2009). Consequently, the demand for high quality afterschool programs, and to learn from successful ones, has never been greater. This "Making Afterschool Programs Better"…

The educational achievement and attainment of young people in the United States has been a long-standing issue of concern. While analyses of long-term trend data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that students in the United States have made gains in reading and mathematics over the past few decades, a sizeable…

The 2001 renewal of the United States' Title I program, which provides federal funds to schools with large populations of low-income students, instituted the Supplemental Educational Services (SES) program in which schools in their third year of failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) are required to offer after-school tutoring in core…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB), with its emphasis on standards-based accountability, has put educators under considerable pressure to improve student academic outcomes. Much of the funding for after-school programs comes from education budgets and is administered by state and local education agencies. Consequently, after-school programs are often…

Conducted a meta-analysis of methodologies used to evaluate after school programs and attempted a synthesis of evaluation findings. Results show that evaluation reports demonstrate moderate compliance with the Program Evaluation Standards of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation but evidence did not allow for meta-analysis of…

This report identifies and synthesizes what is known about specific program features for children and youth aged 6-17 that might be manipulated or regulated-components such as staff wages, group size, activities, and theoretical approach that make up the "how" of program implementation. The authors have culled information from the limited extant…

Schools and districts are adopting out-of-school-time (OST) programs such as after-school programs and summer schools to supplement the education of low-achieving students. However, research has painted a mixed picture of their effectiveness. To clarify OST impacts, this synthesis examined research on OST programs for assisting at-risk students in…