In recent years policymakers have increasingly looked to Extended Learning Time (ELT) as a means of improving student outcomes. As a result, some school districts have increased academic time for students by adding time to the school day or days to the school year. In other communities, schools and community-based organizations have partnered to…

The inability of the United States to narrow the achievement gap stems to a large extent from school reform initiatives that neglect the specific conditions in the lives of low-income students that contribute heavily to inadequate school performance. A new consensus is emerging that a more effective approach would be to prevent the achievement gap…

Extended learning opportunities (ELOs) provide safe, structured learning environments for students outside the traditional school day. ELOs include afterschool and summer learning programs as well as before-school, evening, and weekend programs. ELOs come in many forms and can include tutoring, volunteering, academic support, community service,…

The Afterschool Alliance and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation have been exploring the answers to questions like these throughout New England in a series of reports designed to examine afterschool in the region today. "Spotlight on Maine" is the fifth installment of the Afterschool Alliance's "New England After 3 PM" series,…

How can teachers extend learning and successfully connect with students, enabling them to work on art over the summer months? An activity developed by this author challenged students to craft a personal image based on items they received in the mail from him while he was visiting Japan over the summer break. The students were asked to create and…

Nationally, women are greatly under-represented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) postsecondary majors. Intersect race, social class, and gender, and low-income girls of color enter technology fields at a lower rate than White middle-income females. The authors created an after-school and summer program, CompuGirls,…

This purpose of this report is to examine the role of after school and summer learning programs in supporting student success and to help bridge the divide between out-of-school time programs and schools by offering research-derived principles for effective expanded learning partnership efforts. Discussion points include: (1) Benefits of expanded…

After-school learning, summer learning, and family involvement in learning are major predictors of children's development, educational achievement, and school success. The United States will not achieve its national goals of equal educational opportunity without addressing the importance of and inequities in out-of-school learning opportunities.…

Extended learning opportunities (ELOs) provide safe, structured learning environments for students outside the traditional school day. ELOs include afterschool and summer learning programs as well as before-school, evening, and weekend programs. ELOs come in many forms and can include tutoring, volunteering, academic support, community service,…

The current article presents a model of a summer and after-school psychoeducational intervention for children ages 4 to 11 and parents offered at an African American church. The IMPPACT program may be best described as a community-based program that applies salient dimensions of African American religiosity and cultural values to the cultivation…

In response to requests from out-of-school time (OST) providers, the authors have created this practitioner's guidebook for integrating adolescent literacy development initiatives into a wide variety of OST programs. As readers will discover in subsequent chapters, the authors' definition of adolescent literacy development represents a…

The severe youth health crisis involving overweight and obesity requires a complex policy response involving multiple domains: education, agriculture, health services, and community planning. This research examines gardening's affective benefits for adolescents and the potential school and youth gardens have to support healthy communities.…

America is failing its young Black boys. In metropolitan ghettos, rural villages and midsized townships across the country, schools have become holding tanks for populations of Black boys who have a statistically higher probability of walking the corridors of prison than the halls of college. Across America, the problem of Black male achievement…

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education's Policy and Program Studies Service contracted with SRI International and its partner, Policy Studies Associates, to undertake an evaluation of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. The following evaluation questions informed this study: (1) What is the nature of activities in centers that are…

Policymakers nationwide must decide how to best invest in education and related opportunities, such as out-of-school-time programs targeting youth and early-childhood education programs. In this paper, we review the costs, benefits, and costs and benefits relative to one another for one alternative type of investment: youth programs that are…