Background: Summer camp is an experiential learning setting that supports youth development. Due to high fees, youth from low-income backgrounds often have fewer opportunities to attend. Subsequently, there is little literature about these youth's camp experiences. Purpose: This research examined growth and the characteristics supporting growth in…

Rural, low-socioeconomic school districts experience academic achievement gaps that are exacerbated by summer reading loss. The United States Department of Education developed a national curriculum in which all students are taught the same skills to address the gap between low-socioeconomic status students and their wealthier peers. However, it…

This report summarizes findings from the School Meals Operations Study (SMO), part of an ongoing series to assess school meal operations on a school year (SY) basis. This volume of the study covers July 2021 through the end of September 2022 and includes SY 2021-2022. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, the Families First Coronavirus…

Even before the COVID-19 crisis and its deep economic effects, over a million New Yorkers struggled with food insecurity--particularly in low-income communities of color. Because many families with children rely on meal programs provided to students during the school year, rates of food insecurity tend to increase sharply during the summer months.…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among summer reading camp participants' initial prosocial efficacy, reading motivation, and their reading skill changes. Despite the theoretical explanation of social and emotional learning (SEL), there is a lack of empirical studies demonstrating the complex relationships and processes…

Purpose/Objectives: Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) participation rates often underserve the number of children in the community needing access to food. Each year, District 87 in Bloomington, Illinois offers children 18 years old and younger a free lunch at six feeding sites throughout the community as part of the SFSP. During the summer of…

Parents increasingly view afterschool as important to the healthy development of children. Afterschool programs support healthy development. Parents of color and families with low incomes especially value afterschool's role in supporting healthy development. America After 3PM is a nationally representative survey of randomly selected adults who…

In response to the need to broaden participation in computer science, we designed a summer camp to teach middle-school-aged youth to code apps with MIT App Inventor. For the past four summers, we have observed significant gains in youth's interest and self-efficacy in computer science, after attending our camps. The majority of these youth,…

In the United States, migrant and seasonal farmworkers mostly of Latino origin work seasonal jobs on large scale farms. Because many of these jobs are temporary, farmworkers often move frequently across state lines and international borders to follow the work in agriculture. Many farmworkers travel with families including young children and one…

The maker movement advocates hands-on making with emerging technologies because of its value for promoting innovative and personally meaningful transdisciplinary learning. Educational research has focused on settings that primarily serve youth from dominant groups, yet we know surprisingly little about making among minoritized youth and the kinds…

We present the results of a novel early childhood intervention in which disadvantaged 3-4-yearold children were randomized to receive a new preschool and parent education program focused on cognitive and non-cognitive skills (CogX) or to a control group that did not receive preschool education. In addition to a typical academic year (9 month)…

Afterschool programs inspire kids to learn, help them make better decisions, and give parents peace of mind. Throughout the pandemic, 21st Century Community Learning Centers have kept kids engaged and learning and met the needs of families nationwide. But the demand for these programs far exceeds the supply. 21st Century Community Learning Centers…

The research design was shaped as a result of the chosen methodology, which was interpretive phenomenological analysis. I was back and forth between narrative inquiry and IPA for a long time but wanted to focus on capturing the lived experiences across subjects from similar backgrounds who experienced the same phenomenon, which in this case was a…

The summer learning effect has been identified as a major barrier in creating equitable outcomes in the United States, especially in reading and mathematics. Less is known about the effect in other education systems and subject domains. This research draws on a large sample (N = 4390) to examine the summer learning effect in the comparatively…

Young children enter kindergarten with varying levels of readiness and abilities to learn. One factor that contributes to lower levels of school readiness is poverty. One timely, cost-effective, and feasible strategy to boost school readiness, regardless of exposure to high-quality preschool is to leverage the summer months prior to kindergarten…